Pregnant

It has been a traumatic few weeks. I hardly know whether to feel relieved or distraught. Of course it is a relief that Susan's recent distraction is not the result of a malignant brain tumour or suchlike. Susan told me the news the week before last, it is only now that I can bring myself to record it. 'Sit down,' Susan said as I came in from work, 'I've got news.' At first I continued my inspection of the fridge contents. Susan is always requesting that I be seated to here the news that a Lakeland store is coming, or that there is a closing down sale somewhere. I should have guessed the news from the state of the iced finger that Susan had been eating. 'I'm pregnant,' she said, smiling weakly. I think deep down I had suspected as much but had preferred the state of happy ignorance. And until that moment my suspicion had lay vaguely in the future. Now it is sitting firmly in front of me. What are we to do?

Sexual Divide

Natasha has caused quite a sexual divide amongst the office crew. Frances and Mrs C have been vying with each other for the position of dominant female, and although Frances is be no means unattractive, she is clearly threatened by Natasha's looks. All of  the guys have been pawing the carpet like rampant stallions on heat, with of course the exception of Crazy Horse who is management and therefore not permitted to lower his guard and express his true nature. Colin says that Natasha c ould, 'lap dance the cock off a giant panda,' whatever that means. While Bishop is unable to express anything other than a pant whenever Natasha is within ten feet of him. Lately he has been dousing himself even more liberally than usual with the hideous concortion he calls aftershave, he reeks like a bargain basement perfume department most mornings. I suppose it is an improvement on his natural aroma; unscented he exudes a faint waft of pond. No good will come of his obsession with Natasha.

Bishop's Fantasy World

It's no picnic lunch sitting at a desk opposite Bishop. He lives in a delusional fantasy world inhabited by sci-fi freaks and astrological birth charts. He boasts that he has memorised the star signs of the entire cast of Star Trek. And it is a crime the neglect that is inflicted on his desk plants, his watering schedule is a disgrace. I told him bluntly that if he wasn't prepared to look after them he shouldn't bother to keep them in the first place. He said that I shouldn't waste my time worrying about the lower orders of life. God knows that I try to tolerate the twerp but he can be irksome beyond measure. When I got home this evening Susan wasn't in the least bit interested in my problems with Bishop, although I can hardly blame her for that. Rather that talk she preferred to fiddle with her mobile phone. I have begun to notice that she has been somewhat distracted of late. It has reached the point where she has abandoned her makeup, although I have no intention of remarking on the fact. The last time I commented negatively on her appearance she told me, rather coldly, that my eyes have too much blue for their own good and that my hair lacks ambition. She says it has a tendency to tuft about in the wind like carelessly sown wheat. I have probably left a cushion in the wrong place again. Either that or some relationship mishap or eyelash catastrophe has befallen one of her extended clan.

New Girl

I chatted to the new girl, Natasha, at lunchtime. She is twenty six, single and extremely attractive. She has breasts that force you to stare into her eyes for fear of looking down and becoming transfixed. Crazy Horse will have to issue Bishop with a bib if he wants his overtime reports kept free from excessive drool. She told me that a messy break-up with her boyfriend had prompted her to move down from Newcastle. Her ex had apparently made her life hell after the break, stalking her and attempting all kinds of blackmail malarky to get her to go back with him. I felt quite sorry for her, she seems quite innocent and naive. She obviously has had some previous admin experience as her filing system appears to be the standard large pile of paper secured by an elastic band and labelled filing. It will be a breath of fresh air to have her around the place.

Makeover

I hadn't expected much from the grossly over-hyped office makeover, but the final result is an insult. There are gulags with better decor. Crazy Horse must have retrieved the 'new' desks from a skip somewhere. Mine glories in greyness, it is the furniture equivalent of a black hole sucking light from its immediate vicinity. It is pock marked with sticky coffee rings and I had to prop up the wobbly leg with scrap A4. It is mostly wood, apart from the puke coloured laminate inlay, and would disgrace a bonfire. I have the sneaking suspicion that Bishop may have rearranged the furniture before the rest of us arrived. His desk is the pick of the bunch, it has certainly never been near the frontline of serious admin. The office reeked completely of paint fumes when we arrived for work yesterday. Mrs C had been scent marking her territory with pot pourri prior to the arrival of the new girl, but even that didn't make any difference. The painters were still finishing up as we arrived. They were apparently kept back by having to repeatedly move the various stacks of boxes of paper. The stationery suppliers can't collect our surplus 297 boxes until tomorrow. The paint fumes were made worse by the fact that most of the windows had been painted shut. By tea break I could feel myself becoming quite light headed. When lunchtime arrived there was a mass exodus. It was too late for Bishop though, he spent the morning insisting that he couldn't smell a thing, but just after twelve he stripped to his waist, wrote 'Spock Rocks' on his chest in indelible marker and passed out on his desk. The rest of us took pictures with our phones. If his brain is permanently damaged Crazy Horse will have a lot of explaining to do. Goodness knows what Natasha, the new addition to our team, thought about the whole performance.

Contact lenses

The stationery was delivered this morning. Delivery continued throughout lunchtime and into the afternoon. By two o'clock we couldn't move for boxes of A4 paper. Crazy Horse almost burst a blood vessel with rage. His temper wasn't improved by the fact that it took him ten minutes to escape from his office. 'Who ordered the stationery?' he bellowed from behind a barricade of boxes. I left the office just before he stampeded his way through, too embarrassed to face his wrath in public. I let Frances explain that I had made a small typo on the demand. We now have enough A4 to last us through to 2020. On my return to the office I was summoned to the stable to explain myself. The vein on Crazy Horse's neck was still throbbing disconcertingly. I could hardly take my eyes off it as it puffed up and down; not unlike the throat of a randy bullfrog in full call. I was subjected to a twenty minute tirade about the current economic environment and my ignorance of basic protocol checks. When he had finished I left weary and lightheaded. I took little consolation in the fact that my colleagues presented me with an impromptu award for the biggest cock up on the stationery demand since Archie D had misread the order form and ordered 2000 staplers. My mood was much improved in the afternoon when Bishop lost one of his new trial contact lenses. He demanded that everyone remain in their seats while he scrambled around the floor on his hands and knees with his specs, as a makeshift magnifying glass, in one hand and a desk lamp in the other. I couldn't resist crunching one of Mrs C's lemon sherbets underfoot much to everyone's amusement. Bishop searched for over half an hour, finding nothing but lemon sherbet shards and a few paperclips, before giving up. Shortly afterwards he discovered that he had managed to put both lenses into the same eye. He has decided to stick with his glasses for now.

Friday

Bishop is positively salivating at the possibility that our new start may be a 'stunning babe.' Crazy Horse, who normally drip feeds information as slowly as possible, in a moment of Friday exuberance told us that the new start is called Natasha. 'It must be a girl then,' Mrs C deduced, causing her to be called Sherlock for the rest of the morning. One has to admire Bishop's optimism, in my experience stunning babes have little interest in prematurely balding blokes with an obsessive interest in Venn diagrams of Star Trek characters / series overlaps. Even from his best angle he looks like a startled meerkat. I really will have to work out how to insert a new paragraph on this contraption, I'm loathe to start typing NEW PARA as if I'm writing some form of telegram. Mrs C had a bit of an episode this afternoon. Being called Sherlock throughout the morning can't have helped but she has been out of sorts all week worrying about the reshuffle. She has been continuously comfort eating lemon sherbets since Monday. She is not the type to embrace change easily, the poor dear gets flustered when the clocks go forward. I don't know why but she seems to have a sentimental attachment to Greenwich Mean Time. At afternoon tea break I asked her if she wanted a coffee and she burst into tears. I was at a complete loss, I mumbled a few pathetic words of support and added an extra spoon of sugar to her coffee. However it failed to curtail her lemon sherbet frenzy, when she returned from the toilets she had exhausted her reserve supply and was forced to nibble on the stale custard creams that are normally kept for visitors. NEW PARA At least the weekend is finally upon us.