Egoboost

He showered and had a brief rub down in Physiotherapy, drank a cup of hot coffee gratefully that a student nurse had waiting for him, conscious of her worshipful eyes on him, knowing the cause of that worship, knowing that he was worthy of it. Egoboost, but well earned.

“Tuckerizing” is a private, ‘inside’ thing, a way of expressing friendship and giving an egoboost to admired and respected people.

Raju gets a niche in her heart precisely because of his appreciation of her art, an appreciation that she sorely needs as an egoboost.

In an ideal world you would ask your girlfriend and your girlfriend would say no. What’s more, she would then go on to assure you that all other men are mere slugs compared to you, that you’re the best she’s ever had, that you’re hung like an Irish wolfhound blah blah egoboost blah. In real life, however, your stridently intelligent girlfriend will realise that suspicious minds stem from suspicious deeds and that it is actually you who is either having, or thinking about having, an affair.

To commit an act so horrible, at least by the standards of contemporary society, an act so vilified, and to get totally and utterly away with it—well, one couldn’t help but get a little egoboost out of that.

I loved the game, I loved all these wonderful characters that my friends and I had created, I loved the egoboost I got from my players after an especially exciting session … but I loved having a house to live in, too, which meant I had to keep making those pesky mortgage payments.

‘Ah, the queen and her loyal subjects,’ Stockport remarked as if he’d found a chink in The Cat’s democratic armour. She knew what he thought. He thought this was an egoboost, a thrill of power, that The Cat did this as self-promotion. He couldn’t be more wrong.

I hated to think it was due to some self-aggrandizing cockholster clutching at power for an egoboost, so it was probably some petty little reg-wanker hoping that by enforcing “procedures” he’d make a name for himself.