Right after I finished uni, I moved about 200 miles south and started my first ‘real job’. It proved to me that I was independent enough to move somewhere completely different far far away on my own, and that I didn’t have to become a recession statistic.

It wasn’t easy. In retrospect, it may not have been the most logical step to take, but I don’t regret it one bit. I met some amazing people, some of the best I’ve worked with (and I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of great people). I don’t see them as much as I would like to, but a couple of weeks ago I went down for the weekend to visit. Three years on, we’re almost all in different places. In most ways we’re as different as we can be: southern and northern, rich and poor, gay and straight, dark and light. We still have a fantastic time, like we always did. We still laugh at ourselves – and each other – like we always did.

One of the things that brought us together those years ago was stress. It was hard for all of us. But it’s easy enough to turn on people in difficult times, and the fact that we stuck together and developed our friendships extensively even through extremely tough patches says it all really. These are no longer my managers, colleagues and even The Boss’s son. These are friends I’m happy to say I love, will willingly share a bed with, and will even tolerate being shrieked at in the morning as an ‘amusing’ wake up call. (Just about. Probably best not to try that one too often.)

The most tangible expression of our friendship (our highs, lows, and overall hysteria especially) is The Quote Book. And yes, it deserves Title Case.

Yes, my floor is dirty. My ‘Screw Cooking’ regime has extended to a ‘Screw Cleaning’ phase. And by phase I mean lifestyle.

The Quote Book is more than just amusing, ridiculous and downright filthy comments from people who work in an office. It represents a hell of a lot of things: frustration, happiness, anarchy, and a fight against political correctness. Some days it was the only way I could cope in a world where grown men got yelled at for turning up to meetings on time, where putting email recipients in the ‘wrong order’ (i.e. a certain person not being first in the address bar) was a crime, and where thousands of website pages had to be printed out and posted to people every season.

Seriously, this place made The Devil Wears Prada look like fricking Winnie the Pooh.

The Quote Book actually started life as a series of post-its on the wall by my desk, but it gradually expanded so much it became book-worthy. I transferred everything into the book when we moved buildings. There’s no date order, especially from the post-it era, a few random pages are blank, and the bits that I’ve written are barely legible.

Even when I’m deliberately not photographing cats, they still appear in my photos.

But along with chocolate, it was our lifeline in many ways. Flicking through or reading aloud on particularly bad days never failed to cheer us up. And as it turned out, our friends and partners thought it was hilarious too. Even people who don’t know us seem to find it pretty funny.

Wirginia’s beautifully Photoshopped face.

I try to bring the book along with me when I visit, and this time was no different. It got passed around, photos of favourite pages were taken, and to be honest, I love seeing people reading it. It’s impossible to read without a smile on your face (added wtf is optional), and it’s tough to read more than a couple of pages without laughing out loud.

There are print outs, drawings, Photoshop gags and a lot of shit in there. There’s even my one and only slave contract in there, in true British Empire style.

Looking back now, it all seems a bit surreal. An accidental coping mechanism, a desire to create something, a need to have a bit of control when everything else was out of control, simply a way to make work more bearable. Whatever the unintentional purposes of The Quote Book, it will always pretty special.