AN EXPERT

I've become an expert. When people need an expert they call me and I show up and display my expertise. This usually involves clipboards. I'll show up with a clipboard and look around and make little ticks on a form type of thing that is fastened to the clipboard. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the consultation, I will wear a beekeeper's outfit. If anyone asks why I'm dressed like a beekeeper I tell them to be quiet because I'm trying to concentrate. I might spray a few things with a can of something, like deodorant or something, and then go over the sprayed area with a small brush and then peer at it through binoculars. Then I might hold up a radio that isn't tuned to any channel and is just emitting a static buzz. I'll wander around with the radio, gradually turning the volume up and down. Then, when all that is done, I sit in the centre of a circle of lit candles and animal skulls and, in a low voice, chant the following: 'The Vengabus is coming and everybody's jumping. New York to San Fransisco, an intercity disco'.

After all that is done, I pull off the beekeeper hood and look thoughtful and say that I'll be back in a week. Then I come back in a week and give a powerpoint presentation that contains lots of graphs. I point to the graphs with a pointer, which is useful for pointing, and say things about 'sectors' and 'quarters' and 'synergies' and 'utilisations' and 'deliverables'. Then I pack up my presentation equipment and charge an astronomical fee for my time.

My clients are usually pleased with what I do as the results provided are open to interpretation and can justify whatever the clients need justifying or validate whatever notion they had before I arrived. It is with the help of my expertise that services have been privatised and ghosts exorcised. I have given restaurants certificates of hygiene and recommended that vicinities be doused in phosgene. Or so it seems. I did no such thing but I didn't do otherwise either. I just provided abstract data that can be construed any old way.

Actual experts have objected to my consultative enterprise. They say that one man could not possibly be an expert in all things and that it takes years to become an expert in just one field. However, to allay any worries these expert opinions might cause my clients, I did a study on the opinions of these other experts. This study resulted in a graph that (depending on what you choose to see in it) proved the expert opinions on my expertise to be far from expert. That seemed to do the trick as my clients did not want the actions they took upon my advice to be found dubious. I didn't bother wearing the beekeeper outfit for that one but I do sometimes wear it at home. I find that I am more relaxed with it on. When I remove it I am sometimes gripped by an overwhelming sense of doubt and the unshakeable feeling that the whole world is completely and utterly insane.

The above graph clearly proves something. 

Unless it's upside down, in which case it clearly proves something else.