pandemian

31 August 2006

8.45am - Arrive at the training centre. Boss has decided I must be office IT guru. No-one yet here but me. Rows of computers blink mournfully.

8.50am - Fall at the first hurdle when cannot work beverage making machine. Stare at it in incomprehension for a few seconds before pressing all the buttons at once in sudden fury. Boiling water shoots out and down my shirt. Bra now clearly visible to all.

8.52am - Locate tissues and try again. Tea bags not baggy but in strange plastic rectangle. Where to put strange plastic rectangle? Pop it in cup and add water. No tea.

8.57am - About to give up when suddenly notice slot on side of machine. Push in strange plastic rectangle and weep with glee as tea spills out of the machine and onto floor. Grab cardboard cup and catch tea as it drips off sideboard. Notice trainer watching me from the doorway. Stand up with great dignity, take five packets of chocolate biscuits to soothe ego and stalk towards a PC.

9.01am - Rest of the class arrives but I am distracted by the trainer, who has the pinched, small eyes, spiky brown hair and oversized front teeth of something small and mammalian. But what? Stoat? Otter? I am tormented by my inability to place it.

10.15am - Trainer has been talking for over an hour when I suddenly notice that the woman next to me isn't dutifully following every point and click of the trainer's mouse but is instead online looking at dildos. Consider sending her machine a quick email recommending the one second from the left but eventually decide against it.

10.45am - Marmoset? Polecat?

11.20am - Trainer unexpectedly starts talking about how to permanently delete emails and recall unadvised ones sent in haste. Eyebrows around the class shoot up and pencils start scribbling earnestly for the first time. Tomorrow when I try to tell my boss what I've learnt this will be the only thing I remember how to do.

11.28am - Woman seems to have decided on the realistic flesh-toned ten inch veined 'double'. She has her credit card out.

12.45pm - Lunchtime. I take my teddy bear shaped crisps and pockets full of swiped chocolate biscuits and go and sit in the drizzle of Bloomsbury Square to think. Weasel? Shrew? I feel I am getting close but my train of thought is derailed by a man in a pink straw boater clutching a can of Special Brew and wandering about singing something that starts out incomprehensibly but later swells with clarity and a beautiful resonance into every single last booming couplet of The Hair On Her Dicky-Di-Do. I go back inside.

2.10pm - Woman next to me returns an hour late from lunch smelling faintly of gin. Think I love her but can't remember how one goes about making friends from scratch. Last time I tried it it was at a friend's seventh birthday sleepover and I passed a note saying WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND? YES NO PLEASE TICK

2.21pm - Ferret? Dormouse?

3.23pm - Rain shatters against the glass roof of the classroom. The afternoon has turned into a question and answer session and I can barely keep awake. Some people have clearly been paying attention but when it becomes my turn to talk, all I can think is that it hangs down to her knees.

4.55pm - I can't stand another hour and leave early, pleading newborn quintuplets at home with chicken pox and dubious babysitting arrangements. Take proffered folder of reference material and bolt, ignoring the trainer's oleaginous wink and the trail of biscuit crumbs that follow me to the door. But in his squinchy face I fancy I see something more clearly...

3.53am, next morning - Vole!