Fear

There's some sort of contingency training going on this morning. The nature of the business requires that every employee is contractually obliged to be trained in how to talk down to grieving relatives in the event of a disaster. I loathe contingency training. It's just so creepy. They get the local Samaritans to ring up and pretend that they can't find their Grandma, and I always want to say "look, let's just level with each other. You haven't really lost contact with a close family member, and I couldn't care less. Let's just tick the right boxes on the sheet and say no more about it". Honestly, I once had a protracted argument with someone pretending that their mother had rung them to say she'd had a small dog in her suitcase and could someone go back for it? Talk about a waste of my time.

So anyway, there are currently about four hundred people crammed into the MD's office. It's like one of those record attempts from the eighties where they see how many students you can fit in a phone box. Naturally there aren't enough chairs to go round, so a member of the contingency planning team has taken it upon himself to be Chair Monitor. Frankly, it's terrifying. It's like one of those weird arty foreign films where you're not sure what's happening but it's horrible and you feel a bit sick but don't know why. He keeps emerging from the office (where people are sitting on each other's laps with their faces pressed against the glass) and sort of staring round the room in search of his next victim chair. He's doing ponderous blinking, like a lizard but in a pink shirt, and when he spots a likely candidate he sort of homes in on it and wheels it verrrry, verrrry sloooowly across the office. I can't bear it. The thready, haunting sound of chair wheels lazily squeaking will blow through dreams of lurking shapes and unimaginable horror tonight, you mark my words.

Brr. Carry on.