Dispatches from my old life

For the last two weeks I've been working in Covent Garden, in the same building where I spent six years as a full-time employee. I don't come back that often these days, so on my way to the toilets or the kitchen I peer into the windows of the other offices, looking for anyone I used to know, my pallid face at the glass like a ghost.

Those toilets, I can report, are every bit as revolting as they ever were, with a luxurious carpet of ragged paper towels and toilet paper spread across the cubicle floor by approximately 11.30 in the morning, and mysterious sodden deposits of tissue blocking the basin plug holes. Women's magazine employees, it turns out, are far less fastidious about their toilets than they are about their wardrobes. I take a special interest in the toilets of this building as I spent a lot of time barricading myself in there towards the end of my permanent employment, attempting to fend off extreme anxiety-related nausea.

Some notes from my weeks back in Covent Garden:

a) As a freelance employee, I pass many hours sitting at other people's desks while they are on holiday. Alternative, they may recently have vacated their workstation for good, having moved on to a new job, perhaps with a bigger desk and a proper footrest. You can tell a lot about a person from their desk. When it comes to eating lunch, you can ascertain whether they prefer a sandwich to a couscous salad by the nature of the crumbs trapped in their keyboard. You may be able to glean something of their personal life by the subject matter of their computer's desktop wallpaper. Popular subjects include:

1) Looming face of toddler filling the entire frame with 'adorable' drooling grin.
2) Pet cat.
3) Manchester United posing with trophy.
4) Liverpool posing with trophy.
5) Sunset holiday photo they are particularly proud of (location: usually Thailand), and are considering sending in for publication in a broadsheet newspaper (NB, my mum ACTUALLY HAD ONE OF THESE PUBLISHED in yesterday's Sunday Times, only it's not a sunset or Thailand).

1) to 3) I find offputting. 4) and 5) I can deal with.

I actually know the person whose desk I was sitting at for the last week, so no guesswork was required. She is a sweetheart. Even if I didn't have this prior information, I would still feel a fond affinity with her on account of the way she has worn away the S on her keyboard - which I assume is due to a neurotic and over-cautious tendency to press the apple key + 'S' every few minutes and save her work from the obliterative caprices of computer malfunction.


b) There are two zebra crossings just outside this building, which I have to cross on my way to and from the train station, and to and from somewhere nice to buy my lunch. That's four crossings a day. Over the years, I must have crossed those zebra crossings thousands of times, as well as many others across the length and breadth of England and Scotland (I've never been to Ireland or Wales). But during these two weeks, with their flurry of crossings-and-crossings-back, I've found myself suddenly stricken with doubt about my thank-you-to-stopping-motorists-wave.

Are you a thank-you-waver, zebra crossing-wise?

I like to think I present a veneer of good manners to the world, even if the tutting, scowling cracks beneath are plainly visible to the world. My intentions are towards a course of good manners and consideration. I say thank you to the bus driver as I tap my Oyster card. I'm nice to waitresses. And I give a little wave to motorists who slow down as I hover by a crossing. But this fresh waving anxiety is twofold. Firstly, I have found myself questioning the style of my wave. I imagine this is a long dark night of the soul familiar to Kate Middleton. I seem to favour a 'How!'-style raise of the palm – brisk, businesslike, direct. But now it's starting to feel soulless. I'm considering introducing a jauntier, from-the-wrist action – or even a subtle Mexican wave of the digits. Secondly, and more existentially, I'm starting to wonder if a wave is necessary at all. Is it slightly over-egging things? Now, as I conscientiously salute each motorist, I think I see, in the dead eyes that meet mine, some expression of 'Don't flatter yourself. I'm only stopping because it's the law.' Should I scale down the wave to a nonchalant head-nod or lift of the chin? I don't really do nonchalant though. I mostly do flapping.

c) If you want to get cash out at a lunchtime – or directly after work – in Covent Garden, you have no option but to queue. It's incredibly selfish that everyone else is attempting to withdraw funds in order to eat, shop or enjoy the company of their friends at the same time as you, but that's human nature. I try to fight against this every day, which is why I say thank you to the bus driver as I tap my Oyster card and am nice to waitresses. Queuing is just part of us. And, for me, it's a time to reflect on the unanswered questions in my life, or else ponder the style choices of the persons queuing in front of me. I'm always in search of regular features to introduce on this blog – perhaps misguidedly I see them as an easy-and-quick way to up my feeble post rate. So *jaded drum roll* I present to you the first ever Cashpoint Couture. Or perhaps Cashpoint-Queue Cool. I don't know. I didn't really think it through that well. Anyway, here's the first entry:

I'm calling this first entry 'Home-knit or hipster?' Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course, but I hope you see the sociological difference in the generalised stereotyping of these two catergories. To illustrate: many years ago, I went to my company's in-house magazine awards, where one category was jointly won by the employees of Your Horse and The Face. Both teams were rocking tweedily geekish ensembles – one team voguishly, the other innately – to the extent where it was difficult to tell which was which.

In other alliterative, potential-new-regular-post news, I'm also thinking of introducing 'Bus Bling' - a salute to the jewellery of my fellow bus passengers. Here, on the 185 from East Dulwich Station, I saw these rocks.


Hmm. Contender for most waffly post ever, I would say.

Romance! Free stuff! The return of thrilling reader interaction, a bit!

Here is a free book, lying on the table of free books at work.


The table of free books is also home to free DVDs and free CDs, and there is one in every magazine office. Unloved and unreviewed, each item was once optimistically sent in by a PR, hoping for an ounce of exposure. When they arrive, these items are torn from their jiffy bags (which, brace yourselves when I tell you, are rarely recycled) and only a precious few are spared the fate of a careless toss onto the free table for passing employees to pick up and take home.

I haunt the free table like a ghost looking for treasure. The ghost of a magpie, I suppose. A magpie with superior wing/beak strength that enables it to carry items as heavy as a book. Also, a magpie that prefers reading to glittery things.

I have lost count of the number of free books that I have dragged home, thinking they look interesting or improving, blindly ignoring the likelihood that they will fall into the 98.7% I never get round to reading. Sometimes I take them along to the book auction we have at our book group, where their quality is routinely derided – I am always slightly stung by this.

I have now decided to use them as building blocks in the construction of a paper-based kingdom in my local park, which features only replicas of famous landmarks, Vegas-style. The Taj Mahal next to the Eiffel Tower, next to the Pyramids and the Chrysler building. I will call it Worldworld.

Obviously if someone comes at it with a naked flame, it'll be Pudding Lane all over again.

Anyway.

The book above caught my eye for two reasons. Firstly, the quotation from 'Romantic Times'. How did I not know that such an organisation existed? This is terrific news. Their quote on the cover promises the book will make 'our hearts melt'. This must be the very definition of an occupational hazard if you work at Romantic Times. (I like to imagine the Romantic Times started when a small group of people who worked at Radio Times finally had enough of the television output not being totally romantic all the time – the final straw came when broadcasters refused to introduce an erotic narrative to the weather forecast – and formed a breakaway group who were set on rectifying this unhappy state of affairs.) Other occupational hazards include starry eyes, weak knees, habitual nausea ('lovesickness') and frequent swooning. Employees have notched up a precocious early retirement rate.

The other distracting thing about this book was its confident boast that it is 'a Huxtable family novel'. Blame the era I grew up in, but when I think of a Huxtable family novel, I imagine the tales of an incorrigible GP in multi-coloured knitwear living in New York in the 80s with his lovably chaotic family. I'm surprised the publishers would be happy for this confusion to go unchecked. The cover has a period feel, which makes one wonder if this is Victorian Cosby Show, a similar conceit to the wartime episodes of EastEnders or The First Of The Summer Wine. In these books, Theo Huxtable has an industrial accident in the mill but he's not seriously hurt and he meets some really inspiring kids while he's recuperating in hospital. Vanessa Huxtable is furious that she can't have a new bonnet for the dance, but Doctor Cliff (or 'Papa' as he's known here) reminds her that if anyone is judging her for her bonnet, they're not worth knowing in the first place and she should refuse to dance with them. Also, judging from the cover, if this is a spin-off from The Cosby Show, the retouching staff of Indian Elle might have got their hands on the artwork.

There are many items that appear on the free tables in the various places I work that I consider writing about. You won't be surprised to hear that I rarely get round to it. Just one example is this:


It's Maths Doesn't Suck by Danica McKellar, aka Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years, aka Will Bailey's stepsister on The West Wing.

Just to recap, Danica McKellar is a) Winnie Cooper, b) has a maths degree and c) has been on The West Wing. This makes her ridiculously cool.

This is the British edition as the title has been translated from the original US version, Math Doesn't Suck. It is like an edition of Jackie magazine, but it helps you learn mathematics. How Much Do You And Your Best Friend Have In Common? Who's The Cute New Foreign Exchange Student? Are You Drinking Enough Water? All these questions and more can be answered with maths. Or even math. I think it's OK to use either.

Also, there are maths horoscopes. Mine, Capricorn, includes the line 'You don't need a study group for motivation - you're one of the few signs that does very well for itself.' Mmm. Maybe stick to the maths, Winnie. Leave the astrology alone.

Anyway, my point is that I have this copy of Maths Doesn't Suck in my house. It needs a new home before it becomes the key stone of the faux KL Tower I am readying to build. Would you like it? If you would, send me an email with your address and you may get a lovely surprise* **.

*Surprise comprises 1 copy of Maths Doesn't Suck by Winnie from The Wonder Years sent to you second class in a recycled jiffy bag.
**You may not.

Only when I barf

When I was little, I would occasionally watch a hospital-set sitcom called Only When I Laugh. It was on ITV, so I was probably feeling pretty bloody rebellious whenever I tuned in.

I remember Peter Bowles and James Bolam in dressing gowns and striped pyjamas. I probably remember Richard Wilson in a white coat.

And I think I remember this: as a kind of catchphrase, James Bolam's character would beckon someone to his bedside, lift up the sheets that covered him and say 'Do you want to see something really horrible?'

Well, readers, that is what I'm saying to you today.

This is what someone, somewhere, is calling the Christmas pizza.

(Hand: model's own.)

The traditional pizza base is wearing a vest of gravy under its toppings. There are thick layers of turkey. There are diced roast potatoes. There is some kind of sausage meat/stuffing aspect. There is brie.

I will say that again. There is brie.

There is a large amount of jam cranberry sauce.

Even though this is, on paper, a revolting proposition, you will notice from the picture above that half of the pizza has already been eaten. This is because in this sort of situation, the Infinite Grazing Thereom comes into practice, which says that if you leave any item of food, however unpleasant, in the environs of a group of office workers for long enough, eventually it will be eaten.

Cagney and Jonesy

Although I am currently working for an American-owned company, I was still a little bit surprised to see this on the door to the toilets recently.

This uninhibited embrace of the US vernacular confused me, as I had the firm understanding that the building remained a bastion of Britishness, an impression based on the following lazy stereotypes watertight scientific evidence:

• In the shadow of the building, on the East side, people like to drink beer in a huge crowd outside a bar, at the merest suggestion of sunshine.
• For the last two weeks, these people have also been watching Wimbledon on a big screen temporarily erected there.
• Most of the offices inside the building work to the rhythms of an endless cycle of tea drinking.
• There is always fish and chips in the canteen on a Friday.

Given this conviction, and the fact that the day had been low on drama thus far, I wondered if some kind of Star Spangled Banner-related adventure might occur only when you walked through the door. The sign was a message, an invitation. Mostly, I hoped that if I went in, used the toilet and came out again, it would not be into the lair of the women's glossy magazine from whence I'd come, but some detail-perfect US office environs – with my wishlist scenarios being the newsroom in Broadcast News or Cagney and Lacey's professional base camp. Or that I would not exit through a door, but have to climb out of a filing cabinet, like Hong Kong Phooey. That is the power of the word janitor.

A few years ago, Ms S and I went to a Halloween party as dead Cagney and Lacey. It wasn't that we wished Christine and Mary-Beth ill – far from it. It was more that we were seeking some blonde/brunette duo to essay, and we needed a seasonally spooky twist.

I have blacked our eyes out, to protect Ms S's identity and my own, and also because I am proud of my laughably limited Photoshop skills.

You can see from this photo that while Ms S looks awesome, I have failed to achieve a truly convincing physical representation of Mary-Beth Lacy. It is almost as though tucking some cushions in your waistband just makes you look like yourself but with cushions tucked in your waistband, as opposed to a matronly and thick-set 46-year-old several sizes bigger than you. As it is, my puny Joneser The Softy shoulders and child hands are still much in evidence.

What you cannot see in this photo, though – not clearly anyway – are: 1) Our brilliant facsimile NYPD badges, designed by Ms S, and crafted from foam board and safety pins. 2) Our attention to detail with the fake blood, which was exemplary, in particular where it was coming out of our ears. This, as everyone knows, is TV shorthand for 'OK, this is really bad. You know how this is the last episode of the series? Well, come the next one, this much-loved character with blood coming out of their ears will not be in it.'

Anyway. Did I go through the door? Have I now returned from a dreamlike American adventure in which I was a stranger in a strange land? I did not. I have not. It was the men's toilets.

In which I wonder if I should just loosen the f**k up

As I was leaving work one day last week, I stopped off at the ladies'. There, in front of the communal mirror, a woman in a sleeveless dress was shaving her armpits with a Bic razor.

And what's wrong with that?

That's not a rhetorical question.

I do feel there's something wrong with that but a) I'm not sure what and b) does anyone else?

And what about this: In the crazy-hot summer of 2006 (as the digital memory-stick versions of ourselves will refer to it in the millennia to come), I similarly stopped off at the ladies' at the end of the day, and when I came out of the cubicle I was confronted by a woman stripped down to her bra (fully clothed from the waist down, I should stress) having a very thorough top-half wash over the basin.

(Perhaps the bottom half followed – I didn't linger to see).

She was a slightly older lady. You are right, this is of no relevance whatsoever, except there was a certain mighty, matronly bulk to her bra, and the considerable load it was bearing, that made me scared to reach across her towards the soap for fear of an accidental harassment charge.

When I saw her there, I emitted an inadvertent and high-pitched 'Oop!', my generic call of surprise/clumsiness/exertion (it is somewhere between 'Ooh!' and 'Oops!' and helpfully serves as either) at the unexpected MIDDLE-AGED BOSOM SEMI-REVEAL! that confronted me.

She, meanwhile, was entirely at ease. In fact, I would say she was revelling in the situation, positively daring me to blanche at her lack of inhibition.

'Don't mind me!' she beamed.

I did a bit.

If you want the truth, I'm always slightly intimidated by a very public groomer, a mirror moth – even if it's not depilation or partial nudity, but just a fairly normal amount of make-up. While it's likely that the opposite is true, I always divine a terrifying confidence about them. And – as in this case – they seem to feed off my timidity and slightly apologetic lack of grooming in order to become bolder and prouder.

I am 36, and I think I am so independent, so on top of it, with my work-life balance and my mortgage for one. But still. Seeing another woman in the throes of an elaborate make-up routine still makes me feel about seven.

It is an everyday anxiety that I will go the toilet at the end of the working day (I am a creature of habit, this much is clear) and there will be a group of advertising types in full preen, colonising the basin area like cockatoos spread out along a branch. You can usually sense this before you walk in, from the exotic scents that have seeped out under the door and into the corridor. For at least one reason, I take a deep breath before I go in.

Then I'll push open the door, and dive into a cubicle and, when I emerge, I have to insinuate myself – with my bare face and scuffed-up student-wardrobe jeans – among them, to perform something as mundane and totally square as washing my hands. 'Sorry... can I just... oop!... get some soap... thanks... sorry....' They will grudgingly slouch to one side slightly, to permit my path to dull old hygiene. There will most likely be some high-budget handbag cast down on the flat space between the sinks, its open mouth leering at me, showing off a threatening set of hair straighteners, cans and compacts inside. This means I have to rinse in the smallest, carefulest way possible, for fear of shaking water onto the uber-bag and provoking some screech of 'WATCH IT, SPLASHY! THIS IS MIU MIU!'

It's worse if I am forced to carry out some token making up myself. While in all likelihood they couldn't care less and are consumed thoroughly by the serious business of bronzer, I am crippled by performance anxiety as I put in my contact lenses, and feel scrutinised as I attempt to fake some colour in my cheeks. I blush (that, right there, is an inadvertent pun) to phantom sneers of: 'Oh! You're using that? On there? And you think that looks OK, do you?'

If there was hair to be removed, I would be undertaking that task in the murky depths of a closed-door cubicle, risking bloodshed and a crick in the neck, rather than publicly hoisting my armpit heavenwards for anyone to interject with 'You've missed a bit... there... down your arm.'

I'm not sure what the corresponding situation would be, were I a man. Perhaps a highly ostentatious changing-room towelling-down, post-shower. More likely, an elaborate hair-product ritual. I'm not sure a straight-forward Remington in front of the mirror of the gents' is the same. Although, if I were a bloke, doubtless I would still find a way to be intimidated by that, projecting a monologue out of the suave mouth of Mr Shaving that was principally: 'Can you guys believe I am having to do this AGAIN? God, it is a nightmare being so hirsute and so fecund and so incredibly made of undiluted MALENESS.'

What is the message here? I don't know. And that's a problem, because I'd quite like to go to bed. But let me refer you to the title of this post.

Loosen up, Jones, won't you?

Specifically named tea news

You join me in one of the kitchens of a fashion-magazine publisher. Would you like some tea? Look, here it is:

Notice how it is described as 'African black tea'. Left to most of us to label this jar – and not the building's brilliantly conscientious facilities department – it would read 'Normal tea', 'Ordinary tea', 'Builder's tea' (question: Some people use the term 'builder's tea' to specify variety, others to describe strength and colour. Who is right?) or simply 'Tea tea'.

[I know there is no such thing as 'Ordinary tea'. Tea is, by its very nature, extraordinary. But if there was such a thing, this would be it.]

But no. It is Black Tea and it is from Africa. It is African Black Tea.

I'm not sure what inspired this small act of full disclosure, but I can't help thinking it's a reflection of the various individuals who live out their nutritional eccentricities here – their adherence to diets and detoxes, to food intolerances and infatuations, to ethical eating as long it's fashionable. Not everyone who uses this kitchen is like that – some of my most normal friends work on style magazines – but I would not be in any way surprised to walk into the room and hear someone in eight-inch wedge sandals and a silk jumpsuit saying, 'What sort of tea is that? Oh good. As long as it's not African white tea. I just can't drink that after 11. God, I am so bloated today.'

With maddening inconsistency, the other beverages are not labelled anywhere near as comprehensively. Where are the stickers that say, 'Cheap instant coffee of indeterminately foreign origin', 'Posh ground coffee that smells like the best thing ever but good luck with finding a cafetiere in this place', 'Disappointing hot chocolate. Will let you down every time', 'Box of teas too weird even for anyone here, sent in by an optimistic PR company and dumped in the kitchen because "someone will have them" but guess what, they won't' and 'Milk. Warning: contains lactose. Also: sniff before you pour'?

The safe completion of the April issue may depend on this information.

If your name's not down…

Here is the bespoke sign that marks the entrance to my youngest niece's bedroom.

It says, 'Hattie room. Keep out. Ore else. My den room. Secret fun. Say password. Only freinds allowd.' A smaller sign below shows a straight-down-to-business list of exactly who the chosen freinds are. There are no grey areas, apart from maybe when it comes to spelling.

Oh, sweet, sweet candour of youth.

Young girls, it's true, can be a thoroughly toxic species with the capricious nature of their friendships. The female population of any school is essentially an unfathomably complicated and constantly shifting Venn diagram of who is talking to who, and who isn't. Dialogue comes from an ever-evolving and logic-free lexicon of rumour, counter-rumour and supposition. Do boys operate this way? I think maybe their abuse is purer, less machiavellian – a simple arsenal of physical aggression and myriad synonyms for 'homosexual'.

But the casual decimation of other people's feelings aside, I am strangely jealous of my niece's scruple-free frankness. In my former working life – which ached with thankless responsibility, and jangled with the sound of idiots asking me questions which I had already answered, I would conservatively estimate, at least three times before – a sign like this at the approach to my desk would have been a dream. I wonder now why I didn't think to make one, out of flatplans I diligently handed out that were barely read, and decorated with a colour palette of highlighter pens that Dulux might call 'Chemically Anxious Flowerbed'.

Instead of a list of freinds allowed in, I probably would have focussed on those who had to stay out, with a self-assessment questionnaire for anyone thinking about approaching my work station which would have read thus:

If you answer 'yes' to any of these questions, please assume I am out of the office and speak to my deputy. Even if I appear to be sitting in front of you, eating a banana and swearing at Radio 1, please be assured that this is, in fact, a hologram, which cannot respond to your requests.

1) Do you work in advertising?' (There are some excellent people working in advertising. Peggy Olson, perhaps. I have not worked with those people.)

2) Have you ever called me 'babe'?

3) Have you ever attempted to give me a shoulder massage at my desk, which I clearly found uncomfortable?

3) Are you in the office on work experience? Has anyone ever described you as an 'eager beaver'? 'Enthusiastic'?'Keen'? These are all excellent qualities, but if you are in possession of any of them, please don't ask if you can shadow me any time before noon.

4) Are you hungry? I am in possession of some snacks, but I do not wish to share them with you. Please refrain from forcing your stupid, clumsy hand uninvited into my bag of cashews/Maltesers/rice crackers, splitting the sides and sending tiny treats skittering over the precipice and into the doomy abyss between my desk and the wall, thus catering a buffet for the building's rodent colony and taking up my valuable filing space.

5) Are you here to ask me the question 'What is the latest date I can write/shoot/start/finish [insert name of feature/task here]? The answer is almost certainly a negative amount of days.

This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Also, I can tell you this, because you are all my freinds: the password to gain entry to my desk area is 'contempt'.

Out with the old

I'm reaching the end of a marathon work stint in the Wapping compound. I say marathon. It is nine weeks. But everyone knows that one freelance week is roughly equivalent to five years of permanently employed service. So I will be expecting at least an engraved Parker Pen on my departure on Friday, not to mention a lukewarm and resentfully attended sparkling wine/cocktail sausage desk buffet.

Will I miss newspaper publishing's very own open prison? I certainly won't miss my computer, where the time delay between my fingers hitting the keys in pursuit of email composition – which I like to do a lot, and fast – and the words appearing on the screen is so slow and bunched up I perpetually feel like it's 1980 and I'm typing on the Grandstand videprinter.

I will, however, miss the nearby Waitrose coffee shop, which has been my only true friend during this difficult time. Today, to heighten my looming sense of separation anxiety, the till operative gave me two free chocolates with my tea. Two! One is a customer courtesy; two is kind of a big deal. In reality, I'm fairly sure it was a result of the eyeroll we shared over the hugely rude SmugMum who had been served just ahead of me.

Lately, I have noticed on several occasions the same elderly man having a cup of tea and taking in the papers of a lunchtime. A few days ago, he was sitting next to me on a high-stools/high-table-along-the-window arrangement, making truly the most phenomenal amount of noise eating an oatcake, which he had brought in from home wrapped in kitchen roll. It was a symphony in sucking and mastication, performed with the mouth. You would not have thought that much moisture could be extracted from an oatcake, but good lord, he was a terrier about it.

Ordinarily, I could not have stood for this feat of noisy eating. There would have been, on my part, geriatricide; on his, no more eating of oatcakes. If there was not actual murder taking place, the Waitrose cafe would have seen at the very least some Olympian tutting, and me sliding off my high stool with clumsy froideur to move somewhere closer to the obliterative roar of the cappuccino machine. But, readers, surprise is a very powerful thing, and my emotional achilles heel is a very weak one, and it is in essence men of a pensionable age sitting on their own in coffee shops. I've said it before, but it is, for me, a 100% sure-fire Random Cry Trigger.

Why was he such a powerful specimen? It probably had a lot to do with his nose, which was Roman, and very much like my grandad's and my dad's and mine, physiognomy fans. But most probably it was his feet, resting uneasily on the bar of the table in front of us, trousers being hoisted up bony flagpole shins by the awkward, forward-sliding posture demanded by the stool. It instantly referred my brain to an image from my younger teenage years that I can't seem to forget – a man being given desperate CPR in the back of an ambulance. I remember two things in particular – the up-and-down arms of the paramedic, engaged in furious chest compressions, and a pair of feet in brown socks and men's sandals dangling lifelessly over the end of the bed. I also remember, as the ambulance pulled away, doors slammed and sirens blaring, my dad saying sadly, and almost under his breath, 'Good luck.'

(In today's parentheses of emotional self-indulgence, I wonder a lot if other people are haunted by seeing this happen to my dad, as I am haunted by this image of someone else's loved one slipping away.)

Come back! Bereavement Two Minutes is over. We're back in Waitrose. And I was taking in my cafe neighbour's gardening-tanned hands and wondering if he had a shed, I had an epiphany and it said a) I must remember to buy some milk before I go back to the office, and b) this borderline fetishism of old people and their lifestyle is possibly slightly weird.

What with this, and my nascent friendship with Lambeth Horticultural Society, and in particular the brilliant Valerie (who may actually be 25 for all I know), I have begun to wonder if it might be healthy to try associating with more people of my own age. I put this to Miss W during a multi-faceted email exchange. Diplomatically she did not reply to that particular thread.

More evidence. Another thing I will remember fondly about this job is the extremely hot lawyer who strides through the editorial office on his way from the outside world to his own glass-walled cell, expertly navigating the assault course of shoes and garments laid out on the carpet by the fashion department as they prep for shoots. To the ingenue, these constitute quite the health-and-safety hazard ('Have you had an accident in the workplace? Tripped over an embellished platform stiletto? Skidded on a shimmering parachute silk jumpsuit? Call Fashion Injury Lawyers 4 U' etc). What I find hottest about him is not his many impressive physical attributes but his speaking voice. Today, however, I realised he sounds a lot like Cliff Richard.

In addition, where did I spend my Friday night? Not taking crystal meth at an underground Dalston speakeasy, but blissfully browsing around the Crayford branch of Hobbycraft.

What comes next? A subscription to the Daniel O'Donnell fanclub and fanatical crocheting?

It is a worry.

Red for danger

This was waiting on my desk to greet me when I got into work on Friday morning:

Ever-mindful of health and safety – yet not quite enough to give the toilets a really good clean with any degree of regularity – the facilities department had let rip a warning with their red print cartridge.

I'm supposing the alcohol denial is important and necessary, and it's not just intended to be small print, but whoever typed it didn't know how to change the font size. I'm supposing it says something about toxicitiy, or lack of, and rules and legality and blah blah.

Yet in this setting – polystyrene ceiling tiles above, stained carpet below, walls closing in left and right, soul seeping away front and centre – it suggests that they envision their beloved employees attempting to suck tiny drops of numbing comfort out of a sanitising wipe, with the desperation of a dying man in the desert. They are probably right.

The morning after four years before

For the last couple of weeks I have been working at a newish place. It is an uncomfortable business for several reasons. First, literally, as I am forced to sit on a terrible chair which ejects me every evening as a new version of myself who walks like Oddbod from Carry On Screaming. Secondly, it is a wretched location, with nothing to do during one's lunch hour except drown one's ennui in hot beverages at a table for one in the nearby Waitrose coffee shop. And c) because the department of four in which I'm working contains two people I have previously interviewed for jobs, in my former working life when I Was Someone. Two people to whom I did not give jobs. This is the source of the discomfort.

They are both lovely, talented people, with whom I would have been happy to share desk space, mid-afternoon/is-it-too-early-to-start-back-on-the biscuits and emergency desk-drawer deodorant (spray, not roll-on - eurgh. I would not share a roll-on with my sister. I don't have a sister and this is a good reason why not). The not-giving-them-jobs thing was not actually my fault. One of them  dropped out after her first interview to take another job. The other one I liked a lot, but she was a powerless victim of the caprices of my then boss.

I think that's how it went. Perhaps I am rewriting our shared history to make myself seem more benign and encouraging, quite probably inspirational, rather than incommunicative, dismissive and overly flippant. 

Still, on my first day at this workplace, there was no reason for me to feel trepidatious. Naturally I still did. It is a bit like being introduced to someone you once had an extremely drunken and categorically one-off fumble with, or have previously met on a blind date that your mutual acquaintances were not aware of. Slightly awkward. A bit embarrassing. Both wondering if the other even remembers. Not wanting to mention it. Tying yourself up in knots of denial and self-absolution until you can no longer comprehend that not mentioning it is, in actual fact, really rude and a bit weird.

One of the people involved, I had seen since our interview. That ice had been broken. Phew. The other one, I was seeing (again) for the first time. After we were (re)introduced, she said enigmatically, 'Oh yes, we've met,' and carried on with her work.  

That was it.

That was it? What does she mean we've met? How can she be so calm about it? Did it mean nothing to her? Maybe she's told all the others… Maybe they all know… Maybe they're all laughing about how I'd got us both some water from the water cooler, and when I went to take a sip of mine, I missed my mouth a little bit and it went down my top. Oh hahahaha. It's all a joke to you, isn't it? I'M NOT LAUGHING.

It then occurred to me that behind their smokescreen of routine pleasantries, the two of them were pooling their power and resources, and planning some kind of payback. I sat at my desk, waiting to be passed a list of demeaning tasks and unreachable goals, and expecting to be cut out of communal biscuit rituals. 

It never happened. No one bogwashed me, stole my dinner money, leant over my desk and shouted in my face 'WHO'S THE DADDY NOW?' or similar. 

Still, I did notice that when either of them handed back pieces of my work that I'd given them to approve, they had pressed very, very hard with their red pen.

Search, copy, paper jam, destroy

When I turned on the photocopier today, at the glossy women's magazine where I was employed, this was the display that greeted me:

What it appears to show to me, a techno-network novice, is the way in which various photocopiers in the building are talking to each other in a manner that ordinary men and women cannot fathom, in order to strengthen their allegiance, to the detriment of the human race. I think we can reasonably infer this.

They are basically daleks. 

A women's magazine is the ideal location for some kind of big screen/small screen/any screen techno-peril epic, if only for:

a) the appropriately inept way most of the staff would run away from their digi-bot attackers, tripping and stumbling and whimpering in on-trend grey patent platform heels.

b) the volume of squealing that can be effortlessly provoked. I've heard this reach eardrum-maiming levels of hysteria at the arrival in the office of a free easter egg. Confronted by a phalanx of marauding photocopying machines with lids flapping open and shut like merciless jaws, and copying lights blinding their victims as they try to escape… Dolby surround sound has never heard the like.

We will speak again in one week's time.

I wish I had a river

Joni Mitchell was right: it's coming on Christmas.

I know this not because Joni Mitchell told me, but because someone got on the train yesterday wearing a Santa hat. This is not unusual at this time of year, of course. Apart from this was a commuter train at 9am. It wasn't half past midnight on the last train back to suburbia. He wasn't stumbling around the West End with the lights of Piccadilly Circus reflected in his glassy eyes, about to auto-asphyxiate by treading on the end of the tinsel he'd jauntily draped around his neck. Neither did he step into the carriage with an attention-expectant face that said 'Is this the Christmas Party express because I've got a first-class ticket to Fun Town!'

Instead he teamed his Santa hat with an air of complete nonchalance, sat down quietly with his briefcase and began his private train meditations just like everyone else.

It was a near-sublimal, semi-incidental signal of Christmas which charmed me right through.

And there was more to come.

As I walked from London Bridge to the office, one of the businesses had thoughtfully drifted their confidential shredded waste around the building to look like a winter wonderland. A lame one, obviously. And topically. But still. It worked for me.

Later, another Christmas miracle. I was let out of work at 2.30pm. So I wandered around Borough Market – pretending I was the sort of person who always wanders round Borough Market on a Friday afternoon – and overheard a well-to-do elderly man saying to his friend, 'My granddaughter eats olives like we used to eat sweets.' 

Then I went to a craft/design fair in the Menier Chocolate Factory. I took a shine to a heart-shaped, pearl-buttoned Christmas decoration on a stall run by two redoubtable 70-something ladies who were at pains to point out that all their wares were made from recycled materials. How much is this? I asked them. Oh, you can just have that one, they said. We just want to encourage people to make their own.

This threw me. Episodes of Seinfeld have been written about more trivial exchanges than this. I couldn't just walk away with a free decoration, leaving them with nothing in return – apart from a warm glow of doing good, but who actually believes in that?

Obviously I had to buy something. But everything else they were selling was, at best, odd. At worst – well, let's just say Not For Me. So I had to comb through all their merchandise looking for the cheapest thing I could buy, while trying not to appear as though I was searching for the cheapest thing I could buy, to ease my conscience and reward them in some way other than spiritually.

In the end, I chose a greetings card of medium-size (not the smallest, crucially), paid a paltry £1 for it, and walked away feeling slightly, if not totally, better and wondering which lukewarm acquaintance I could foist the unloved card onto.

If any of you ever receive from me an oddly-coloured birthday card featuring some slightly misshapen screen-printed birds on the front, you may wish to consider what this means for our friendship.

Don't you love farce? No? OK

There are some days when you're happy for your life to turn a bit Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. A little Chuckle Vision. Some days, you feel the farcical elements of life particulary keenly and are happy to laugh at your part in them. You're totally accepting of the plank of wood on someone's shoulder swinging round to hit you, or the custard pie landing in your face.

I got to work today, and as I stepped out of the lift, I saw there was a man just outside the office door, on a stepladder. He was trying to liberate a particularly stubborn ceiling tile. I always find this an unnerving spectacle. What could tumble out on the tile-wrangler's head? Live bats? A body? At the very least, a cobwebby dynasty of spiders. On this occasion, it was filthy grey water,  emanating from I know not where. At first a trickle, and then a gushing jet, straight into his eyes, running into his mouth, like a leaky radiator in an episode of Terry & June. 'Aarrgh!' he said, as I attempted to sneak around the ladder and get into the office. 'Get me a bucket! Quick! Anything!' he said. Unable to leave a tradesman in peril, I rushed into the nearby kitchen, scattering a cloud of fashionistas as I went, and grabbed an empty lunchbox which I tried to wedge onto the top of the stepladder to catch the water. I hope no one was planning to use it as a home for their organic muesli. But as I reached up, somehow my outstretched arms only served to provide a channel for the water to run down, towards my own head and chest.

Obviously it's not ideal to report for a new stint of work with your most grown-up, sophisticated and fash-wan set of employers spattered with rancid grey water, but I would have been in fairly good spirits about this. However, the episode was soured by the grim-faced reluctance of my co-conspirator to share the moment of absurdity. I was laughing. He was scowling and harumphing and muttering how he got all the worst jobs. Of course, he is half-right. That is his actual, real full-time job, whereas mine is to sit in a comfortable office and look at the internet and make tea, and punctuate this with short bursts of non-arduous tasking. But still, he's the sort of person who would probably put a deckchair up first time. It would be no fun to bake a wedding cake in a giant kitchen with him. He probably doesn't even have any inter-connecting doors in his house. 

Lashings of lift-based awkwardness

I discovered as a child, through reading the young detective fiction of Enid Blyton (who was born on my road, above the DIY shop, blue plaque fans), what a lot can be learnt just by keeping your eyes and ears open. For the Secret Seven, the lesson that a man is more likely to steal and trespass if he has a beard. For me, a couple of days ago, how not to give someone a compliment.

I was in the lift at work with two money-harvesting automatons from the advertising floor.

Overtanned female bonus-bot: I've been wanting to say this to you for ages and I'm going to say it now because you're leaving tomorrow, and I know it's a bit weird because it kind of sounds like an insult but it's not, it's actually a compliment…

Aggressively heterosexual male bonus-bot: [Already slightly insulted] Right…

OFBB: It's just [speaking suddenly very fast] you've got really nice eyelashes and it makes you look like you're wearing eyeliner all the time.

AHMBB: Erm… Right. So you're basically saying I look like I've got make-up on.

OFBB: No. I'm not saying that. You've just got those sort of eyes, they're just, I don't know, sort of… [The doors open on my floor and I get out]

It is this kind of smooth-talking that has led to several magazine closures and a take-over.

He's wearing a special suit for Joey Lucas...

I am wildly excited about the line-up for the next series of Dancing With The Stars. Steve Guttenberg! Monica Seles! Joey Lucas from The West Wing! Lest we forget, Joey Lucus*, who has a real name - it is Marlee Matlin – is deaf IRL. As dancing impairments go, it knocks an artificial limb into a cocked hat. How will she know when to start and when to stop? The answer is, of course, Beethoven. But I would like the answer to involve Kenny, her signing hearer (maybe not strictly a word) from TWW. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see him quickstepping alongside her and her partner, signalling when to step, and when to ball-change.

*Lest we forget, Joey Lucas was also, according to me, the real TLA of Josh Lyman. Amy was too high-maintenace. Donna was too Donna. Don't fight me on this. It is my unshakeable belief.

I do quite often feel like the Alan Whicker of the magazine freelancers' world. Not enough to make me wear a panama hat, but still. Every week I interact with the indigenous culture of a different office. Today, at my current workplace, it was Cheese Day. This is a festival that happens there several times a year and it is taken very seriously. Everyone brings in a challenging kind of cheese – woe betide anyone showing up with some Dairylea triangles – and assorted 'sundries'. There were grapes, homemade bread and chutneys, olives... It was like Borough Market rehoused on top of a filing cabinet. It was quite brilliant until a) the arrival of a medium-severe grape-induced stomach ache and b) the proximity of my desk to the cheese board (which is very proximity indeed) resulting in near asphyxiation from the fumes by about 4.45pm.

Yesterday, it was most definitely not totally dark for the first time this year, as I walked back to Charing Cross at 6. This means it is no longer 100% winter. The percentage of winter is in retreat from now on. I love the winter and even I felt slightly happy about this. Who could not be warmed by walking homewards under a sky the colour of apricots?