Discretion Advised

So what about when ridiculous things stop happening? Unfortunately it doesn’t mean I run out of things to say. There’s been plenty of embarrassing nonsense to tide me over throughout my life and the past few weeks have proved no exception.

For the past four years or so, I’ve avoided eating wheat. I was having, shall we say, digestive problems. A quick trial at cutting out a certain pesky grain saw a swift alleviation in symptoms. My avoidance of wheat caused people to fall into two categories. The first acted as if sponsored by the World Wheat Council and instructed me that by giving it up I was only making things worse and so I was doing myself no favours and they once had this aunty who didn’t eat it for twenty four years only to find out she was allergic to everything but wheat.

The second category saw this as a moment to demonstrate some remarkable ignorance. “Can you have cake?” they would ask. “What about bread? Pasta? Baguettes?” Of course, the answer to all of these is, bloody hell, no. People with first-class Oxbridge degrees were asking if wheat was found in potatoes or rice or asking what corn flakes were made from (er, corn?).

There was actually also a third category who would ask immediately what would happen if I ate wheat. They deserve no mention here.

So after years of being awkward in restaurants, overspending in the supermarket and generally leading a miserable existence, free of Danish pastries, cookies and Bran Flakes, events took a turn for the infuriating when I started to realise I had digestive problems all the time anyway, despite the food fad. Even the occasions when I gave in to pizza failed to produce any consistent results.

A quick stop in at the doctor’s of a morning lead to an in-depth discussion of the properties of my turds before some prodding of the abdomen by cold hands. A blood test was allegedly the next step. Smashing, I thought, some time off work and a manly stab in the arm. I find injections quite exciting. Perhaps I should have been a junky. You get the chance to man up in the face of impending physical abuse and there’s always the chance you might catch something nasty from an NHS needle, which will make a chucklesome tale to beguile any dinner party.

Luckily, with a hospital behind my house, making the most of their drop-in blood test service was practically no hassle. I warned my old job that I would be late, confident no-one would notice either way. I popped down after a modest lie-in to join the queue. Patients were required to take a ticket and wait for their number. I enjoyed the nostalgic trip back to the days of waiting for an assistant to fit new school shoes in Freeman Hardy Willis for a brief moment before becoming sidetracked by guessing which macabre reasons had drawn such a collection of people to have their blood sucked and tested on a sunny Friday morning. I hoped I looked healthy enough not to fit in, but kept a low profile with my nose in my book should anyone find out I was there for something so middle-class and self-indulgent as suspected IBS.

My turn was soon called and I followed the signs into a sizeable room where a row of large Caribbean ladies were busily extracting plasma and the like from hundreds of arms an hour.

“Have you fasted?” the lady barked as I sat down. I thought she was accusing me of flatulence until my brain processed the ‘s’.

“No,” I said, finding the question about as irrelevant as asking a bus-driver if he’s ever been to Switzerland on a singles’ mountain-walking holiday.

“Right then, can’t do that test,” she declared, scribbling notes. I felt like I was being accused, but moved on, seeing as I couldn’t exactly go back to earlier that day and not have a bowl of Rice Krispies.

In a jiffy, I was on my way back to the flat, sporting a manly plaster on my forearm with a small dot of blood seeping through. Gosh, I had really been in the wars, hadn’t I? I was a little dismayed that the whole process was so speedy, as I would have been on time for work had I set off then. Back in my room, I stuck on a DVD to make sure I made the most of my hospital appointment excuse.

Getting the results, however, was not so good. Not because I have crap guts - I still don't know. Just getting my hands on any sort of feedback required dedication and perseverence. A bit like being a record-breaker. I dashed out of my new job one lunchtime several weeks later to hear the good or bad news. The surgery informed me I would have to ring a special results hotline. It sounded a bit like a premium number for erotic chat but I was informed it was a reliable service, operating nine to five, every day of the week, apart from Thursday. And what day was it? Thursday.

I rang on the Friday and finally got through to a friendly sounding Indian man. I told him I was after the number for the results line. “That’s me!” he exclaimed in a voice similar to someone spotting themselves on the telly. He had soon calmed himself and had my results to hand. “Oh, oh dear,” he began, “I’m sorry, but a doctor will have to phone you back.” It all sounded terribly ominous and I reacted by chuckling to myself. I somehow didn’t trust this man’s medical diagnostics and looked forward to hearing from someone who wasn’t a receptionist.

Said doctor rung when I was on my way home, wedged onto the upper deck of the 168, thumbing a free copy of Dazed & Confused while wondering which of the recently boarded characters would come and squeeze into the seat next to me. The doctor ran through that everything was in order during a conversation which thankfully appeared quite innocent to any eavesdroppers. And in the confines of a cramped bus, I’m sure every word was inescapably audible. “But I understand you’re still having some trouble?” he asked. Not wanting to launch into my digestive history on a packed bus of fellow ninety-pence commuters, I nodded stupidly.

Shouldn't've Said That

I’m starting to worry there might be something about my face which causes others to impart unto me dark secrets they wouldn’t normally share with others. Or maybe not. But a couple of recent events have led me to wonder. And they seem to involve eye-care.

It kind of goes back to my less than 20/20 vision. No-one realised I was short-sighted until I was about fifteen, which went some way to explain my lack of prowess with ball sports: I couldn’t see the bloody ball. I have been shoving contacts in my eyes since I was twenty, but prudently booked a quick check-up with the Camden branch of a well-known national chain of opticians. “You’re eyes are infected,” the optician said, having prodded around for a bit and squirted some colourful dye onto my eyeball’s surface, “well, your eyelids are.” Great, I thought, until I was informed that I couldn’t wear my contacts for five days until eye-drops had sped the infection on to recovery. This would mean wearing my glasses, unless I fancied spending the best part of week ignoring friends, talking to strangers I have mistaken for friends, falling down and getting run over. Which I didn’t. Although perhaps it wouldn't be too different to how I usually spend my weeks.

However, my glasses had rarely seen the light of day. I overwore my contacts and I was proud of it. I did not identify myself as a glasses wearer. Mostly because I only had an old pair of NHS specs whose ends I had chewed and whose lenses were scratched. Shamefully, I wore them to work, on the train, in the street and around the flat. I chose to go to the gym blind however, reasoning that although I had already achieved the pinnacle of embarrassment there, there was no point adding to it.

The resulting epiphany was I decided I had to get new glasses sorted out. Maybe I would need trendy media specs for my trendy media job. What I didn’t realise was that this would involve numerous trips back to the branch for fittings, trials, appointments, inquisitions and general catch-ups. I had the entire branch’s staff giving me feedback on how I looked in the majority of the frames on offer (before embarrassingly informing them I would be back after payday when I would actually be able to afford the blessed things).

But it was during one of the fittings that the overshares with the staff began.

“What do you reckon’s worth more, mate, a tonne of iron or a tonne of steel?”

I wasn’t sure what to answer. Was this some sort of science test? Had GCSEs returned and would I be expected to show my working out? “Erm, I’m not really sure,” I began tentatively, trying to focus on the matter at hand: glasses. “Maybe steel,” I ventured eventually, “cos iron is untreated.” I had no idea what I was talking about.

“And what about nickel?” he asked.

Flummoxed, I speculated further, unsure as to what aspect of my appearance might have suggested that I had any interest in metallurgy or commodities trading. “Why do you ask?” I said.

“Oh we’re just clearing out the basement.”

Logical enough, then. Turns out this is the sort of stuff kept under the shopfloor of your high street optician. You might raise your eyebrows or you might not care. Maybe it was just a bit of filler chat while we fiddled with my new frames. But then said trained optician begins recounting to me how he suspected the value to be about “six grand” and that he used to drive around with a mate’s truck and empty recycling containers of their precious nickel and steel cans and make a fortune selling everything on to scrap merchants. “We stripped Battersea Power Station down to nothing,” he went on, before finally pausing to ask, “You’re not a copper, are ya?” I answered truthfully that I wasn’t, withholding that part of me was contemplating shopping him to Crimestoppers. Not sure why he only asked that AFTER incriminating himself extensively.

The tales of recycling theft days were long and tedious and I was not sure what sort of responses were expected from me. I wasn’t exactly impressed. And to be honest, I wasn’t hugely interested. Awkwardly enough, I managed to tear myself away and pay and then leave, worried I might now risk going daaahn for a stretch for Association with Criminals or some similar bylaw.

But it seemed the overshare mentality was shared by his colleagues. My next visit saw an employee asking me for advice concerning her mother’s career in Asian banking, going so far as to disclose her mother’s salary and work history, as well as alluding to racism rife within the industry. Again, I stole myself away, disinterested and slightly embarrassed.

It’s one thing to make conversation, but there is something of an art in keeping things appropriate for both parties. Obviously, I’m a fine one to talk, divulging away about myself on this very page, but out and about, surely some finesse is required to prevent embarrassment, awkwardness and wanton self-incrimination...?

Meathead, Part II

So while it might seem fine to suffer life-threatening accidents in one’s own time, dealing with their consequences at work leaves a little something to be desired. The impact of the bench-press bar being dropped on my head left me with quite a shiner the following day. I had an imprint on my cheek below my eye, as if I had smeared on some purplish war paint before playing American football. This was going to be hard to explain to co-workers come Tuesday morning.

I managed to saunter in without too much bother, but was soon cornered in the kitchen by some inquisitors.

“Taken a knock to the head?” someone asked.

My formulated excuse was simple. I had slipped on some wet tiles in my kitchen, thanks to the slovenly lifestyle choices of my ‘stupid’ flatmates. I hadn’t just fallen over, but had spun into the air as if in some awful Hollywood comedy aimed at under-tweens and frat boys, using only my face to grab onto a kitchen work surface to decelerate my descent. Thusly, I had twatted myself.

But why the excuse in the first place? Vanity, I suppose. And also a dying hope to save some face, as it were. People at my work already thought I was stupid, so why give them further evidence of my stupidity in my private life? It would only add to my reputation as an idiot that I was such a weakling that I collapsed under weights in the gym. Slipping in water could befall anyone, no matter how muscly, and seemed the perfect cover-up.

I did however miss an opportunity to make the entire fiasco fully acceptable. Somebody put two and two together and asked the following question, “Were you drunk?” Although it was a Monday night, had I confessed inebriation, I would have enjoyed a little of legend status among the self-proclaimed office banter-mongers, hopping from desk to desk saying, “Ha, golly, Rob is such a legend – apparently he was wasted and smacked himself in the face with a kitchen worktop.” Not needing this validation, I replied, with a vague sense of honesty, that I was not drunk.

I have missed this chance previously when telling another colleague about the state of my IKEA bed. Namely, that all the slats seem to be falling through the frame at will, leading to my suspicion that the bed has been broken. “ Were you shagging on it?” was apparently the obvious question, and to me, the obvious answer was, “Er, no.” There was a girl in the bed but no conjugal thrusting shattered those slats. Had this been the case, I would have again achieved a big of ‘ledge’ status among the bored and the artless. Never mind.

But back to my sore head. Throughout the next day I failed to be productive at all. This was, of course, no different to my usual professional performance, but only on this day I felt sick AND I had a headache. I later realised this might have been concussion. Having felt like a fool all day, I resolved that I was owed a day off and followed up with a sickie the morning after. Surely massive head injury had earned me a lie-in and some prolonged channel-surfing.

I’m not sure work were bothered by my absence. They were also slightly indifferent the best part of a month and a bit later when I handed in my notice. “It’s not for you, is it?” my line manager asked sweetly. Erm, not really. They were at pains to point out I did not need to see out my notice period, but I was clear that I needed to stay for at least one more payday.

I thought I might finally reveal the truth about my head injury once my departure was imminent. That I might confess that the purplish line that gradually turned deep brown before migrating up my face and circling my eye, leading to my resembling a boozer pugilist, was in fact down to my utter failure as a gym-user, rather than attributable to any comedy mishap brought about by my flatmates’ antipathy towards a tidy kitchen. But I didn’t.

Meathead, Part I

There’s something truly awful about going to the gym: the other people. I think it must be equally as bad for both sexes. Girls have to deal with skinny minnies parading around in tight leggings and needlessly flattening needlessly flat stomachs, while working up an unwomanly sweat in many a jiggling contraption. For the boys, it’s not much better. Chaps generally tend to go to the gym in order to get muscles. But then each gym is filled with characters so huge that intimidation is difficult to avoid. We skinny folk cower in the corner, while the fat lads get lost somewhere in between, neither group getting anywhere while the perennially muscular buffen up further still.

Nevertheless, I still occasionally get in from work, eat something disgusting and cheap, pull on a tracksuit and head out to the local gym round the corner from the flat. I’ll never be one of those monsters but it’s nice to blast away the cobwebs and manufacture some endorphins to see one through the rest of the week.

One of the things I hate the most is the bench press. This is where you lie down on your back on a bench and repeated lift a loaded bar above your chest. It’s difficult, everyone looks to see how much you are lifting and, in my particular gym, it is situated right in the middle of the floor. So while I quite like to slip in and work out inconspicuously, plucking up the mood to get on this device requires striding over to it as if declaring “Come and see how much I can lift!”

How much I can lift is, of course, not very much. It doesn’t help matters that my inherent dislike of intensive physical labour makes it difficult for me to bother to push myself enough to make any real progress. And before this descends into the vacuous bile that is weight-training discussion, I hasten to add that this is heading somewhere typically ridiculous.

It was a Monday, not long ago, and I was in the midst of being very disciplined about going to the gym. I approached the dreaded bench press with dignity and pride and proceeded to load up and get repping. I was determined to push myself and did more sets than normal. In addition, I was aware of one of the regulars ‘observing’ me via one of the mirrors. This was mildly offputting: people should be focussing on themselves as far as I’m concerned. Nevertheless, I pressed on, quite literally.

At the end of each set, the bar needs to be placed back on its rack. There are hooks to rest it on and the bar has to be lifted over and on to these. Whatever happens, you need to make sure you have enough strength left in you to do this because, if you can’t, there is nowhere else for the bar to go...

Holding the bar in its highest position at the end of the set, I decided I could squeeze out one more repetition, just to push myself that bit further. As I brought the bar down, I realised this was a terrible idea, akin to crossing the road without looking or opting to take a first job in the headhunting industry. Panic set in somewhere in my mind and my arms rushed to bring the bar back up before everything gave way and collapsed onto me. I managed to get the bar back up, feeling the muscles in my arms scream in protest.

But there was an unusual clunk as I realised I had pushed the bar up into the underside of the hooks instead of bringing it to rest on top of them. The last ounce of strength had accelerated the bar up into this underside with such force that it practically bounced off the hooks and began its descent towards me. My arms were again called to come to the rescue but they gave out almost immediately. They strained in vain, making little to no difference as I realised that a considerable number of kilograms of metal were hurtling towards my face. By considerable, I simply mean that it is more than anyone would want to catch with their head, not that I was shifting huge amounts.

I thought to roll the bar down my chest but as I went to move the bar, I realised it was heading for my neck and would only garotte me. Time slowed down, or at least my thoughts accelerated. Was I going to die? What would my skull look like crushed? Would it be embarrassing? I felt my eyes bulging in surprise as the one catastrophe I had always been determined to avoid was all set to befall me. From the depths, it occurred to me to turn my face. If I were to survive, I did not want a wonky nose.

This meant I was able to glimpse the unfolding of this cruel disaster in one of the gym’s distant mirrors. They come in handy for vain people wanting to admire their own gurning faces as they pump iron so there was no reason why they couldn’t serve to allow me to witness my own embarrassing death.

As the bar struck my cheek, I felt my legs sort of jolt up. I heard a slight crunch and detected a small seismic shift in the plates of bone forming my skull. The bar and its weights bounced up again as the atmosphere in the gym turned to one of emergency. I felt people’s attention drawn immediately. My arms worked to catch the weight and prevent it landing for a second time on my face. All the while I was staggered that my head had not exploded on impact like a smashed egg.

But the weight had been caught by something else. I became aware of the character who had been paying a bit too much attention previously. He had dashed over from his bench and grabbed onto one end of the bar, holding its weight off of me. Meanwhile, another regular, a ratty man with a pony tail and short shorts, had taken up the other side. Together they hoisted it off me.

I sat up, a bit dazed. Everyone was looking and I detected chuckles. It was indeed funny. Mostly because I wasn’t decapitated. Had I been, maybe the chortles would have been altogether less hardy.

I immediately thanked my two rescuers as sincerely as I could, trying to laugh things off in the process, which was challenging given the pounding sensation in the side of my face. “If you want someone to spot you,” one said, “you should just ask.”

“I’m think I’m done with that for now,” I explained.

They went off and I stood there, dazed, drinking in the mortification as people lost interest. Was I concussed? Was I in shock? I felt like there was a lot of adrenaline coursing through me. It was like falling off a horse: I wanted to flee the scene but I knew I had to get back on. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea as I really had no idea what was what or potentially who I was.

Later on that evening, I decided to go up to one of the rescuers who was still around and thank him again. Sort of addressing the embarrassment head on so it wouldn’t become an issue. Or something. I played the angle that I was sorry for taking such a risk in the first place.

He looked down at me. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I did the same thing when I was eighteen.”

I failed to mention that I was actually twenty-three.

Ignorance

The role of parents becomes increasingly harder to define the greater the number of years one has spent out of the family nest. A lot of my friends are simply bankrolled by their mothers and fathers while others use their homes as cheap accommodation and still enjoy bed and board at a bargain price.

Mine have been pretty hands off for a long time, occasionally helping out here and there but more or less happy to watch me make and resolve my own mistakes or to lend a hand when I crash and burn. The extent of our contact is a once-weekly phone call made by my mother during which we both fill each other in on the minutiae of our respective weeks. She knows I don’t want her judgment (disapproval) on what I have got up to, or I will simply withhold information, and I know how to sound interested when listening to stories about the neighbours’ new double-glazing.

A recent call did however leave me wondering what benefit these calls were having. Somehow, after exchanging tales of my friends’ more impressive careers and my sister’s more exciting social life, we got on to going through my monthly budget. Going through my monthly budget is like walking through a disaster zone minutes after a stampeding tornado has ravaged everything in sight and rendered all life meaningless. As soon as my money comes in, it flies off in countless directions. I am typically buoyed by the influx and allow myself a few frivolities, which generally result in the feast turning to famine with three weeks to go before the next pay date. It’s called being an idiot and it is a field in which I excel.

We went over my outgoings: gym membership, phone contract, internet, council tax and rent, among a wealth (or poverty?) of other things.

“Yes, your rent does sound quite expensive,” she revealed. I informed her that rent is generally quite expensive. “But I think you may be living in an area out of your price range,” she went on. Nice. A cuss on my socio-economic status.

“I’ve been living here for nine months,” I pointed out, “It’s too late to tell me that.” I don’t mean to paint her to sound like some awful woman – she is, in fact, lovely. Just a bit misguided with advice occasionally. We agreed in the end that I was probably better off living in a nice bit than getting mugged on a nightly basis in some hellmouth with no conveniently located tube station.

“Well, I’ll have to go now dear,” she said. “Are you sure you’re alright though, you sound quite sad now.”

“Maybe because we’ve just worked out that I’ll be strapped for cash for a long time yet,” I mentioned. “I was fine until you phoned...”

A career change was going to mean two things: no longer secretly hoping to fall under a tube train so as to avoid having to go into the office of a morning, and taking a massive pay cut if I was to do something remotely of interest to me. My foray into finance, albeit via headhunting, had shown me that I need to fill my day with dealing with firms that at least feel remotely relevant to my life. Had I had the luxury of not owing my college a shedload of cash, I would have gone straight into poverty-wage media. Now those debts were paid off and my tail was firmly between my legs from trying to do something I didn’t like, there was nothing to stop me being one of those trendy young things who get to wear jeans to work.

To my surprise, my career search saw a lot more takers than my previous attempts immediately following my degree. Getting through stage after stage by filling out application forms with an ironic tone or being rude in interviews seemed to lead only to success. But with this process ongoing, my attentions turned to ways to accommodate my new trendy media wage: a pittance in comparison to the heady days of, er, headhunting but I was determined to bite the bullet and tighten the purse strings if it killed me.

Luckily, the flatmates were surprisingly amenable to my suggestion that we could all save some money by renting out our fifth, spare room. As in, a fifth room which happened to be spare. Not the fifth of our numerous spare rooms. And so began Flatmate-Search 2008.

I decided to take the lead, having the least to do in my current job and also perhaps the most exacting standards as to what sort of people I would subject to my charming personality on weekday mornings (don’t speak to me and I won’t be horrible to you).

Carefully worded ads were placed, a photoshoot of the tiny, tiny room undertaken, preceded by clearing all the junk away that had piled up in there. We disposed of the former occupants’ post, found a new home for the vacuum cleaner and threw the rest over the edge of the balcony to the baying crowds below. We decided to specify that we were after a girl in order to prevent the flat from becoming too much more of a dirty pigsty than it already was.

Before long, I was sorting through emails, discriminating on misused apostrophes, embarrassing email addresses and assumptions of success in the process. We had a surprisingly high level of interest from French, Spanish and Italian girls, but did have to disappoint those who really couldn’t spell any English without errors. In retrospect, this sounds like abhorrent snobbery. Of course, everyone was given a fair chance and we met a number of these European ladies. I have been the linguistically incompetent foreigner in climes abroad myself and know how difficult it is not to come across as a stuttering simpleton even in a short email. But there has to be a line somewhere.

Within a week, we were gathered excitedly in the sitting room for the first round of prospective visitors. One French girl told us about her current living arrangements where her flatmate-cum-landlord would wait for her outside the shower to catch a glimpse of her in her towel. Another Italian girl asked if she could smoke in the room.

“No,” I said.

“Can I smoke out the window?”

“No.”

“Can I smoke outside?”

“No,” I said for a final time before showing her out rather swiftly. Obviously smokers deserve the same treatment as normal people, but I’m not sure which part of “We’re looking for a non-smoker” she didn’t understand. Probably the whole thing. When I wasn’t busy being the smoking-police, I was fielding idiotic questions. All too often we heard the same stream of useless blabber: “The room’s a bit smaller than I thought.”

“It’s exactly the same size as the dimensions we specified in the ad.”

“It’s a bit more expensive than I thought.”

“The price is, funnily enough, the same as it was on the ad.”

And other outpourings of speaking before thinking too numerous to bother typing out here. The power relationship in these informal chats is also difficult to define. The prospective flatmate needs to find out if he or she can bear to live with people such as us, and I’m sure a lot of people couldn’t. But maybe they should keep some things to themselves, such as not telling us that they are having to move because they argue too much with their current flatmates about washing up or because their landlord is kicking them out.

Nevertheless, a ray of light was found and everyone was happy. That was, until it was time to get the letting agents involved. Through this experience, I have perfected the skill of finally getting hold of people who systematically ignore their voicemail. I now only need to improve my performance in weaselling out of them what possible reason they could have to ignore me so shamelessly. Perhaps, just as the poor European girls we rejected would like to know on what basis we did so...

Ain't Gonna Go To Work No More

You have to be at work all day so you might as well do something that doesn’t make you want to contract explosive food poisoning just so you can achieve a day of escape. As my mum depressingly says all too frequently, “You spend a large part of your life at work.” I first realised I hated my job several weeks after I started, but I didn’t realise I had realised I hated it until several months later. I found it hard to understand why I was in such a bad mood every morning, why I spent Sunday evenings filled with dread and why, on finally arriving home at the end of the day, I didn’t really recognise who I was. That last comment sounds a bit odd, but I was so bewildered by my first months in the office environment that my personality died away as the day wore on. By half past five, I would have completely lost my sense of humour and all ability to recognise jokes, as well as struggling to string together any halfway decent sentence that might pose any interest to any of my long-suffering flatmates.

Just after Christmas, I had given up mentally. Each day was to be survived, with hometime the only thing to aim towards. I completed my duties as required, but hardly clamoured for the extra work that others lusted after in order to gain good standing among the office’s important people.

“I think I hate everything about my job,” I told my mum on the phone.

“Yes, I thought it wasn’t right for you when you took it,” she said sagely. Right, great, so the whole time she waited for me to realise my mistake, simply so she could wade in with some quality ‘I-told-you-so’ statements and thereby prove that even though I had moved out of the family crotch, I was still a lost child.

I knew I never really wanted to do headhunting, but I thought it would be a good wage and a good start. To compound the mistake, I chose financial headhunting, just to ensure that what might simply have been boring was also strangely incomprehensible. Whenever anyone tried to explain financial aspects to me, I would switch off uncontrollably, becoming distracted by their socks or their fingernails, wondering what they had for breakfast or thinking about what I had had for breakfast. Other times, a bizarre mist would spread in my mind, paralysing all processes of memory formation and forcing me to fall back on my god-given ability to blag.

I could go on and on about the things I didn’t like but there’s no point being depressing. I vowed that I would enjoy the wage just until I had paid off the money I owed my college, then I was out of there, possibly smearing my dirty business on the walls as I waltzed out.

But having already decided to leave, it became even harder to at least look like I was performing. My behaviour deteriorated, I read online papers and Wikipedia in small, discreet windows on the screen, emailed friends at the same rate as normal spoken conversation, stared into space, learnt the Tube map off by heart, wrote to-do lists, doodled in pads, sat in the toilets playing games on my mobile and offering to make cups of tea every five minutes.

A partner I was working for pulled me into a room. “I’m just wondering where your head’s at, Rob.” Aargh someone was on to me. My head had just been reading the Wikipedia entry on the tiny Polynesian state of Tuvalu and now I was going to have to bring the blag like never before.

“What do you mean?” I asked, all innocence and incensed expressions. The kick up the arse kept me going a little longer and saw a bit more effort made begrudgingly. Then the grad scheme began to fall apart around us. The crumbs of the credit crunch had tumbled down to our level, business was slowing, partners were greying and I still wasn’t interested. My role in the firm became more freelance instead of being attached to a team, which meant I more or less reported to no-one. I worked on a project for six weeks and did nothing the entire time. I also completely got away with it as people just weren’t expecting such brazen dickheadedness from anyone.

Meanwhile, I was out most lunchtimes meeting recruiters, all the while making my own applications to any job where I might be able to wear skinny jeans and trainers and not have to shave. In other words: media. The recruiters proved useless, either harassing me about wholly unsuitable jobs, making me sit maths tests the moment I came into their offices or doing nothing at all besides displaying inferiority complexes that my field of recruitment was more prestigious than theirs. Recruitment’s recruitment and it just wasn’t for me.

Bagging an offer was an amazing feeling, as was dashing out of a company meeting to take the call informing me. I returned to that meeting unbearably smug and proceeded to neck as much free wine as possible in private celebration while everyone else squinted at tiny profit figures on the plasma screens. Pressed for a start date, I geared up to hand in my notice, coming in as the second grad to jump ship.

“I’d also like to resign,” I informed our lovely line manager.

I had barely finished the sentence when she broke into a relieved smile and asked, “It’s not for you, is it?” Fair enough I suppose...