August is the cruellest month

OK, it's the silly season once again. But don't worry, soon we can all get back to making normal excuses for why business is rubbish.

August is the month when we can expect to read such headlines as 'Market for cheese-powered disk drives melts away,' 'Terminator stole my love interest' and 'Bracknell council backs IT theme park to squeeze cash from Yanks.' Yes, the silly season is here.

For channel staff sweating through this barren month, the prospect of an IT World of Adventures staffed by redundant senior marketing executives yelling 'Roll up for the end-of-the-line rollercoaster!' is as appealing as life gets.

But what else can the channel do to relieve August's traditional mixture of boredom and tension? You are bored because everyone, including your boss, is on holiday. And you are tense because you know he will come back.

Your boss is likely to be away because the school summer term has finished. Being a lot older than you, the chances are he is married with a couple of sprogs. Right now he is probably sitting by a pool on a Club Med holiday, where the kids spend all day in 'activity' clubs.

He spends all day thinking that he should have stuck with the Atkins diet back in June and wondering (despite his ample pot) about his chances with the wife of his new mate Nige, who works in the media.

Being stuck in the office you are now faced with several choices. You can look busy while talking to your partner on the phone for hours; daydream about your chances of resurrecting your (insert appropriate sport here) career; or explore new career opportunities away from a recession-prone, morally bankrupt business - in the burgeoning arms trade, for example.

Selling computers in August is a thankless, even hopeless task. Nevertheless we can expect lots of people saying: 'We had an exceptional August' and 'It wasn't as slow as we first feared.'

But don't worry, because soon it will be September and the fourth quarter is just around the corner. Then we can all get back to making normal excuses for why business is rubbish.

So remember that the key to success in August is scouring the headlines ('Huge vacuum shuts M4') for reasons why no one bought anything.

Of course, one headline you won't be reading this month is 'Dell sees bandwagon and ignores it.'