I’ve spent the day in frantic negotiation over a quibble. My boss wants a game to go in the magazine; his boss wants it with an even more frantic desire. I feel that it would be good for the magazine in the short term if it went in, bad in the long term, because the quality of review we’re going to get from a couple of days play for this particular title is likely to be very poor and damage our reputation with people who give one, even a flying one. That said, there’s a certain camaraderie building up between me and the put-upon PR, as we both act as the poultice absorbing the vitriol and tension from the developer and the magazine, and I feel like a soldier crouched in a trench while all sorts of shit flies overhead, who knows that when the war is over he’ll be able to have a pint with his opposite number and slag off the idiots who sent them unprepared into such a fight. Not that I’d use the word idiot with reference to anyone in authority, lawks no. And not that I’m going to tell you what the game is, unless you ask dead nice, like.