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The Office

Shortly after my return in April I realised that I needed to find immediate work to keep myself in expensive gadgets and cargo pants, so I called up an office I used to work at during my university summer vacations to let them know I was available for a while until I found something permanent. My lightning-speed keyboard skills, picked up years ago when I worked in the print, have served me well, and, with my mildly obsessive approach to spelling and grammar, I was treated like an exotic species of (curiously male) secretary from a bygone age - what you might (if you were Greek, or over 80) call an amanuensis, even. Moneypenny, perhaps, or Poirot's Miss Leman. The work itself, however, isn't quite so exotic. In fact, you could say it's about the least cheerful, most glamourless business I could have landed myself in (from the hedonistic delights of the Castro). London's Local Authorities, much like those in every other part of the world, have a reputation for cronyism, corruption, and crazy bureaucracy. The one I'm currently working for, producing court documents that help rescue tortured children from their dysfunctional families and evict squatters from local slums, makes regular appearances in the satirical magazine Private Eye's "Rotten Boroughs" section. So used to these are the borough's employees that although the content is unwelcome, the infamy is greeted with a sense of delight. In spite of what sounds like a bit of a whinge, it's a good place to work, for a while. My colleagues are friendly and kind, with tea rotas, fruit-cake and flexi-time being the plats du jour. And because I'm the only person whose fingers race rather than rattle across a keyboard and has higher than second-grade English, they think I'm a genius.

I must leave soon, before it becomes a career-quicksand.


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