Amazingly, I'm not at all angry. I am in work and I am soaking wet. My trainers squelch when I walk and my jeans have a tell-tale dark tide mark, which is slowly moving down my legs as the water evaporates. I get in to work at 10:30 and all I can think is how ridiculous it all is. I mean farcically ridiculous.
The morning begins innocently enough, I get up with a Plan, to put the last coat of gloss on the kitchen windowsill and go to the bank. The painting goes well and I venture out into the rain on my bike. The task is simple: go to the bank, pay in some money, then buy a paintbrush.
I arrive at the bank. Then I get back on my bike and go home again, to pick up the credit cards one generally requires when visiting the bank. It is raining pretty hard now. When I arrive at work it has been an hour cycling in the pouring rain and I'm pretty wet through.
Never mind I think to myself, At least you had the good sense to wrap your change of clothes in a couple of plastic bags, you'll be nice and dry in no time. Well think again. I first realise something is wrong when, after having thoroughly rung out my socks into the sink, the jeans appear to be a little tight...
Hot Tip for a Rainy Day Number One: DON'T pack your girlfriends jeans to wear at work.
But I am not in the slightest bit angry or annoyed. Perhaps this is part of the whole why isn't Dave panicking thing. But I think that it is a result of years of realising that you just can't get upset about this stuff. There's just no point. In India, we had to wait an entire day for a train. Nobody over there cares, it's all just a big excuse for a party on the platform.
So we all have a good laugh about it, I am offered a skirt to wear, but I prefer to stay in my damp clothes, squelching along the corridors. It brightens up an otherwise dull day, if not for me.
The worst thing about all of this is that we are interviewing this week, to replace our difficult Temp Period and today it is my turn to greet the interviewees and lock them in a little side room for the obligatory admin test. This time the test consists of prioritising a load of random stuff and explaining why.
It is the usual crop of eager, nervous young females.1 you always think you have to impress everybody with how wonderfully efficient you are and ask lots of questions, even of the person escorting you up the stairs. I'm probably the wrong sort of person for that particular job, wet or no. I mean, I just don't really care about your journey in, where you live, how precise and punctual you are.
I am beginning to smell. So first impressions last hey?
- After our latest crop of temps, the Powers have decided that even risking another spate of Faculty Pregnancies (four in the last year, out of a staff of 12) is worth avoiding the problems we've had lately.
