Recycled Bullsh-IT

An occasional toponomastic series of relevant UK place names that provide insight into the wacky lockdown world of 2020…

Great Cockup: The government’s initial response to coronavirus

Little Cockup: Every government pronouncement since

Wetwang: That feeling in your trousers when the ransomware demand appears in your inbox

Feltwell: The cosy sensation before you switch on your laptop

Foxup Moor: When you thought our politicians finally had a grip on COVID, they open their mouths again

Browndown: An alternative reaction to Wetwang. Usually found through Loose Bottom

Gweek: The language spoken by your IT department nerds to prevent you understanding what they are really doing in the basement

Stepaside: Innate skill of the longest surviving managers in your business

Barking: If I see another ‘You Don’t Need to be Mad to Work here, but it Helps!” sign, I shall howl

Webber Row: One of many techie spats, such as the merits of HTML5 vs. Javascript

Dumb Hope: Blissfully droning on while all your colleagues chorus: “You’re on mute!”

Scrumpy Way: The hottest new West Country craze to run cider-fuelled brainstorming sessions where many great ideas are generated, but no one can remember what the ideas were or who they are the morning after

Three Knowes: The AI-bots have kicked you out of Britain’s Got Talent Management, condemning you to joblessness for the rest of the decade

Blubberhouses: Most of our homes where we’ve laid down lockdown lard

Winsick: When you finally lose it with the terminally bad Win10 updates and move to ChromeOS or Linux

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch: Falling asleep on your keyboard during a particularly dull finance briefing

Great Snoring: The non-muted sounds coming from your speakers as you try to give an IT update

Six Mile Bottom: What our fable V-shaped recovery has turned into

Sprint Mill: You wonder if agile was the right approach as you grind through your 1,000th timebox

Mumbles: Poor Zoom elocution etiquette, or most new and inaudible BBC dramas

Splatt: The sound your highly geared start-up makes as you hit the flyswatter of the new normal

Witts End: Most families now facing a summer without holidays and still stuck at home with the kids

Seething Wells: Angry fitness freaks unable to admire themselves in the floor to ceiling mirrors at their closed gym

Coughton Park: Where you take the family to catch the next wave of the virus

Unthank: Your unprintable response to your company changing your furlough to a farewell

Liff: But not as we knew it, Jim

Commiserations if any of you actually live in one of these places

Do track down the original “The Meaning of Liff” by Douglas Adams & John Lloyd to appreciate the original and wittier toponymy

John “Catbrain” Moe