Escalation.

It all started quite normally and then went terribly wrong.

Interior. Office. Day.

Me: [Gazing out the window] It’s a nice afternoon actually. I’m looking forward to getting home and sitting in the garden for a while.

Blonde Colleague: [Looking at me as though I’d just announced that gang-raping her mother would be quite the chuckle] You fucking what?

Me: Em. Well. I’ve a back garden now. Bit of a novelty. Thought it would be nice. Seems like quite a pleasant evening. Maybe.

BC: What the fuck do you want to do that for?

Me: Em. Because. You know. Sit in the garden. Glass of wine. Cigarette and that. Just relax I suppose.

BC: Oh yeah? You’ll be fucking freezing. You can do all of that in your front room AND watch television.

Me: I don’t really watch televi-

BC: Don’t even get me started on that one you fucking freak.

Me: Anyway. It’s July.

BC: Yeah? And in the winter? Genius?

Me: Well –

BC: Oh. You’re going to get one of those fucking gas heaters [said as though her mother had indeed been gang-raped by some awful gang of libidious gas heaters] aren’t you?

Me: Now you mention it. That would be good.

BC: WHY?!

Me: Well. I could sit outside in the winter as well.

BC: WHAT?! You can sit inside! And not have bats in your hair!

Me: It wouldn’t be the same. [I am sensing that this is becoming an ‘outdoors versus indoors’ argument and that I have not made my case sufficiently strong. And that I’d only said that it would be quite nice to sit in my new back garden anyway.]

BC: So you’re going to spend money to sit all year round in your garden doing EVERYTHING NORMAL PEOPLE DO IN THEIR FRONT ROOMS without being able to see your telly with bats in your hair and moths and butterflies living in your silly beard?

Me: Look-

BC: And do you know what’ll happen? ‘Cos I’ll tell you. Your neighbours will be on the phone and they’ll be all like “ Hello is that the police? It’s just I think the man next door is a peeping-tom. He’s really skinny so he thinks I can’t see him hiding behind his fucking gas heater but I can see his beady little shrimp-eyes sticking out and his weird E.T. fingers. Can you send a car straight away?”

Me: Ok.

BC: Good?

Me: Not as good as when you told me I look like a cross between Pierce Brosnan [good] and Stephen Hawking [bad].

BC: [Small amount of snot coming out of her nose] Did I say that? I am ON FIRE! You do look a bit crippled though.

Me: Mmmmmm.

I’d just said about the garden and that.

It Rains.

It’s a dark day at work.

The 'positive' announcement from the M.D. is 71 more people will lose their jobs. This will ‘safeguard the future of the company’.

Which is ‘good’.

The 71 people will not know who they are for a month.

Which is not so good. But I suppose they know already. Either way.

I stare out the window. I have much to think about.

The general mood is not fantastic.

Thug Colleague: I reckon we just organize a massive dance-off to decide who keeps their jobs.

Random Colleague*: I’m totally your wing-man on that one like.

Grant From Work: That’s you fucked then Tired. I’ve seen your moves.

Me: Mmmmm.

Some more time passes and I think unhappy thoughts. I tune-in again to hear this:

Thug Colleague: …the spacka school her daughter went tae. By, there were some reet ones there, like. Weird thaw. Some a theym looked nawmal. But there were some reet parsnips an all. It had a canny football pitch thaw. Ah mean for a flid school and that. Their team wasn’t that bad either. Had to put a fucking bell on the ball mind.

I gaze out the window some more. The rain is so heavy I cannot see the other side of the street.



* I've worked with him three years. Never bothered to learn his name or indeed make up a pretend one.