How not to have fun

The only good thing about starting work at 7:00 am on Sunday as I did today is that the clocks went back this weekend and it was really 8:00, or at least it really is as far as my body is for the moment concerned.

No doubt a fortnight hence when I have to repeat the ordeal my body will have adjusted and I will wake up with 'unmitigated grim' lying before me. It is cold and dark, probably wet and windy. The only sensible place on such mornings is beneath the covers with something delectable. Failing that alone's fine once one accustoms oneself.

The mystique in which the work of Sunday is shrouded was to be stripped away for me, I was to be inducted into a small coterie of those with the Knowledge. Did I feel priviledged? It was 7:00 am on Sunday morning and priviledge is most definitely what I was feeling.

On the whole I got through the thing as well as possible. I only flustered the Paper Shuffler on a few occasions. I don't think I left her feeling shrunken or inadequate. I just wish she could believe I would look upon an offer of her job, were it to be extended with the standard issue revulsion usually reserved for all poison chalices.

For that matter I wouldn't accept the DM role were it to suddenly become available. Not for all the money they'd offer me.

The current round of 'Annual' appraisals has resulted in some storms and an awful lot of "I'm not talking to you". Well this place is a kindergarten, after all. The Big Swinging Dick and Yoda were at it for almost two hours yesterday, and not in the way the Dick gets at it with the handmaiden. A few other people are revealing for the first time how completely isolated from reality they are. The most highly improbable people enjoy most 'bringing on younger people'.

In fact some of the creative writing this exercise has generated is deeply, almost horrifyingly creepy. I really don't have the hang of this 'Annual' appraisal lark, at all!

The Big Swinging Dick isn't doing all the appraisals but he is doing a selection from across the staff of 100 or thereabouts. That wasn't why he inflicted himself on us mid-morning. Clearly some of the fall-out from his appraisal of the Bolshie Book Worm has still to land. He snuck in, did the rounds then tore a strip off her, but only after letting plenty of people know his intentions.

Kindergarten.

I now have a big notebook to study. If I were a good girl I wouldn't be wasting everyone's time with this stuff. If I learned all this I wouldn't make mistakes and then I couldn't be criticised and that would make everyone miserable because clearly these people thrive on misery, ineptitude, conflict and whatever that other thing is I can't think of right now.