Monday

I hate my job, I thought, as I came into work this morning. Not exactly the first time I’ve reached that conclusion admittedly. Nor is it the most original thought ever to have passed through someone’s brain, although now I’ve had a cup of strong coffee, filched a custard cream and sat and thought about it a little more deeply, I realised that’s not strictly true anyway. Work is now just something I’ve learnt to live with, like some people cope with a club foot or an unsightly facial blemish. I struggle through life with a crap job. The trouble is I'm just not cut out for the dreary, mind-numbing routine of office work. I don’t know what I am cut out for but it’s not this. I’ve never liked being a small cog in a large machine. Or any sort of cog at all. I’d much rather be the whole machine or, failing that, a spanner

I actually started my working life brim-full of optimism. I remember that first day so vividly, feeling so grown up and independent on my way to work through the heaving rush hour crowds. I was eighteen years old and felt free to be whatever I wanted to be. No more school and exams, no more teachers hovering, ready to jump on anyone stepping out of line. I imagined how my life would be now that I was a proper, grown up working man, picturing myself as a cocksure, jack-the-lad, indulging in sexual banter and innuendo with the older women:

"Morning, Doreen, winter draws on." I'd quip jauntily with a knowing wink, a fag fixed in the corner of my mouth.

"Oy, less of your sauce you, I'll tell your mother." some earthy, ageing but still sexy blonde would reply, also with a fag bobbing between her lips and her eyes signalling what might be if I played my cards right. After a while I’d probably get some nice girl pregnant, perhaps I’d do the right thing by her. Or I’d run away to sea, whatever.

But I was soon brought down to reality. There was to be no lewd banter on the shop floor, there was never going to be, for I was starting work in a dismal, soul-crushing, paper-shuffling office of a large insurance company. The sort of job a bright boy with a cartload of O and A levels was supposed to get, according to the careers officer. There wasn't much on offer back then in any case, jobs were scarce and I foolishly grabbed the first thing that came along. I was ushered round the office and introduced to a lot of dreary people as 'The New Boy' - so much for being a jaunty, wild-oats-sowing jack-the-lad, then shown to a large grey desk.

"I'll just see if I can find you a stapler" the bloke muttered, wandering off.

I gaze out the window at some blokes across the road. They’ve got a white van, some tools, some ladders, they look like they’re going to fix something. With tools. A proper job.

Suddenly someone hisses "Grim Reaper’s on the prowl!" and everyone sits up and tries to look extra specially busy and vital to the operation. Eileen Reaper is the office manager – a monstrous, fifty-something career woman with the interpersonal skills of a wounded grizzly bear. She arrived two years ago, a bustling, bullying new broom to disturb our cosy little office world. Cruel tongues soon christened her the Grim Reaper - an obvious nickname that she probably would have been lumbered with even if she’d been the insufferably cute, dimpled and ringletted winner of the 2005 Miss Sunny Disposition competition. As it happens it’s a name she’s very much grown into.

Generally, using a combination of stealth, cunning and hiding, I manage to stay out of her way. However sometimes, unavoidably, I’m caught – trapped like a small, blameless, dewy-eyed, fluffy thing cornered by a much larger, ugly, scaly, drooling, blood-thirsty one.

I can hear now her bearing down on my desk so I put my head down and type a little faster and more purposefully, busily humming. I can recognise her approach solely from the unappealing static swish of the industrial strength maxi-tights encasing her chubby, fat, fleshy, mottled, pasty, chunky, doughy, cottage cheesy, fat, fat, flabby, fat thighs. (I should point out that this is, of course, a mere assumption on my part and there is no reliable corroborative evidence for this. Indeed, the chances of anyone having observed, manhandled or even disinterestedly poked about anywhere near those thighs and lived to tell the tale are slim. However, I firmly stand by my assumptions however discourteous and judgemental). It is these very thighs that now halt beside my desk. Mere inches from my head. They are probably still a-quivering.

"Could I just have a word please Robert, in my office." she snaps. She has a knack of making that sound like a threat even when it isn’t.

"Hmm, hmm hummm... what, oh sorry, so wrapped up in all this work."

"Quick chat, in my office, now." she repeats, trying to disguise her impatience.

People glance in my direction and give me encouraging smiles or do sympathetic things with their eyebrows. She swishes off briskly. Oh how her legs must chafe. I can only pray that one day those rasping thighs will ignite a gas leak. I follow her dutifully to an accompaniment of Uh-ohs and sniggers from my colleagues.

It’s nothing though, just some trivial work matter, no-one has unearthed shocking evidence of my compulsive skiving, but I emerge from her office to more compassionate looks, as if I’ve been in the headmistress’s study for a good whacking. But she knows that will be the effect, that’s how she keeps the masses humble and downtrodden. Few tears will be shed when the cow eventually explodes in a raging ball of flame.

I have spent many long, embittered days plotting my rebellion - the day when I‘ll leap athletically onto my desk and yell:

Although I’m not quite sure yet where it will go from there.