Will the second last person

to leave the building please remember to switch off the lights.

Yoda will be too panic stricken to do so, and we mustn't squander all that electricity. The emergency lighting will kick in and she's used to blundering about in the dark anyway.

And while we're on the subject of Yoda, and meandering around to the actual point of this post, news has reached me that the nearest thing we have to a creative soul is about to check out for the last time. Senior Frustrated Novelist has cashed in her tokens and is off to join a utility (or her script has been accepted and she's about to become marginally less non-famous than me).

I've only heard this indirectly and I can hardly wait to go in to work on Wednesday and get the Paper-Shuffler-in-Chief's panic stricken take on this turn up for the books. I rather suspect that the general assumption about the place has been that SFN has been too depressed to do anything constructive such as secure alternative employment. In trading on that assumption they've left themselves stranded up that creek with a broken paddle.

A sensible bunch would set themselves to the necessary task of mending that paddle. This bunch are not sensible. What they'll do next is get into a wrangle about matters peripheral - things that are not entirely irrelevant but also not of vital and immediate importance. When they've exhausted themselves they'll not have addressed either of the two critical issues and they might find that in the squabble some one's knocked the not completely useless paddle overboard.

So now they're up that creek without any means of propulsion whatsoever. A girl can dream. A girl can also flog her CV about. Low pay and members of the management team who are either decrepit and bullying or malicious and incompetent; deal with those things and it just might come to pass that staff retention improves.