It's the new moofaf - pass it on

In retrospect, what’s scary is that it came so close to not happening at all.

I wasn’t meant to be on the 5-1-5 funbus out of Brachau yesterday because I got a little present from my boss. Some bosses give their staff motivational chats, some give chocolate bars, I’m told some even occasionally say “go on, knock off early” (it sounds like science fiction to me). Mine, on the other hand, gives me meetings.

“Can you go to this meeting on my behalf?” he said around lunchtime “It’s from 3.30 to 5.30 and I won’t understand what it’s about if I go.”

He’s nothing if not honest.

So I warned Mikey that I wasn’t going to be rushing out of the school gates at 5.15 to pile on to the funbus and with a heavy heart I trudged along to one of our other offices fully prepared to be bored into a coma. But the weirdest thing happened - something even rarer than a boss who tells you to knock off early. The people in the meeting had been worn down by a day of endless flow charts that looked like circuit diagrams designed to deliver massive amounts of voltage to shaved testicles in a concentration camp. They had no fight left in them and more crucially they had run out of waffle. And so – miracle of miracles – my meeting ended early.

I hotfooted it back in time expecting Mikey and Cornish Rob’s little faces to light up with excitement when they realised I would be joining them after all. But no, they barely registered my arrival because they were too busy sniggering like wayward schoolkids enjoying a joke about guffing. How dare they have a laugh without me around? I thought self-righteously to myself as I approached them. But then they let me in on the secret.

It seems that Mikey has discovered a new word to describe a woman’s lady petals (for a more detailed discussion of the thorny issue of decent euphemisms in this area, see here). But best of all, the word manages to combine not being an actual obscenity with sounding like it should be. It’s grisly, it’s repellent, it has a monstrously onomatopoeic quality and every woman I’ve mentioned it to since has pulled a face. But it’s not technically speaking a rude word.

The word is clunge.

Like it? Take it in. Roll my “clunge” round your mouth. I can see you’ve got “clunge” on the tip of your tongue. You want to say it, I can tell. Go on, do it out loud. Feels good, doesn’t it? Good yet wrong, that feeling I spend most of my time trying to engender at the bleeding edge of the fuzzy boundary between “appropriate” and “why is everyone around me wincing, and now I come to think of it why can’t I remember the last time I was invited to a party?”. And with his splendid clunge Mikey had given me a silver bullet in the war against decency.

Better yet, as we piled onto our usual seats near the back (no sign of Android Funbus Driver, thank goodness) Mikey said they had been playing a game all afternoon. You take the name of a famous film and swap one of the words in the title for “clunge” with hilarious consequences. We played it all the way home. Here are some of the highlights.

CORNISH ROB: Gentlemen Prefer Clunge
MIKEY: The Neverending Clunge
MR LONDON STREET: A Fistful Of Clunge
CORNISH ROB: Max Max 3 – Return To Clungerdome
MR LONDON STREET: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Clunge
CORNISH ROB: My Big Fat Greek Clunge
MR LONDON STREET: Attack Of The 50ft Clunge
CORNISH ROB: Carry On Up The Clunge
MIKEY: The Day The Clunge Stood Still
CORNISH ROB: The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Clunge
MR LONDON STREET: Stop! Or My Clunge Will Shoot
MIKEY: James And The Giant Clunge
CORNISH ROB: Scent Of A Clunge

We piled off the bus with Cornish Rob a clear winner on points. I’d had more fun in 20 minutes than I’d had in the whole time I’d been in the office. Why is brainstorming at work never as enjoyable as this?

“Let’s do song titles tomorrow.” said Mikey.

My mind was whirring with possibilities as I walked home in the glorious sunshine. Could I top my initial first suggestion of The First Clunge Is The Deepest? I wasn’t sure.

At work today I had almost forgotten. But Mikey clearly hadn’t - my IM pinged with a message from him.

MIKEY: I've decided to get a board game and sell the TV rights... Suggestions so far for the programme are as follows: Going For Clunge, Play Your Clunge Right, One Man And His Clunge…
MR LONDON STREET: Can’t Clunge, Won’t Clunge?
MIKEY: I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clunge, Noel’s Clunge Party, Clunge Or No Clunge, Clungedown, Clungety Clunge…

The onslaught was relentless. Every 15 seconds a new title pinged into my Instant Messenger. By the time I was faced with Clungety Clunge I was almost helpless with laughter and very conscious that my boss opposite me would find the whole concept of clungitude (clungemungousness?) less rib-tickling than I did.

Later that afternoon I sent Mikey a message.

MR LONDON STREET: We have a problem with clunge.
MIKEY: How come?
MR LONDON STREET: The word already exists and has a bona fide meaning. I checked.
MIKEY: Which is?
MR LONDON STREET: It’s apparently a small flap designed to catch grease, used in the first Wankel rotary engines which were designed in the 50s to try to gain a competitive advantage in Formula 1.

And he believed me. I had to break the news to him, I couldn't bear the thought of him all forlorn and disappointed.

Later in the day I had to speak to Gemma about changing some boring info in a boring database. She was horrified earlier in the day when I introduced her to clunge, so egged on by Mikey I ended up using it in the place of random words when I was explaining what I wanted her to do. In the background I could make out Mikey slowly corpsing in front of his monitor. Surely work isn’t meant to be as ace as this? Clunge for all!

Obviously the office barbecue was an opportunity to eat some good food, drink warm rose wine and listen to the soothing sounds of an authentic steel band while, fundamentally, standing in a car park. But it was also an opportunity to spread the word of clunge and I seized that opportunity with both my grubby mitts. I haven’t had this much fun since I discovered Muncle. The reaction from Mandy was total and utter horror. She clutched her ears as if trying to un-hear the word. One of her colleagues said “Oh, clunge? Cornish Rob’s been going on about that all day. Tomorrow we all have to think up film titles with the word 'clunge' in them.”

You mark my words, “clunge” will be in the Chambers English Dictionary by 2020. Someone will use it on Countdown. I’ll be able to put my clunge down on the Scrabble board and nobody will be bat an eyelid.

This whispering campaign is how it starts.