I can't help but think it is deliberate. On the one day this week I had to go home during the lunch hour to meet a plumber, Boss says at 12.55 - "We need to get this case sorted out. Call the officer in the case and find out how he intends to proceed, call the client and advise him; if it's going to be a charge, get the client in!"

The client IS going to be charged - with theft from employer, big time. What rogues a recession makes of us all. Drove home at breakneck speed to meet plumber, who spent twenty minutes fixing the boiler, and thirty minutes explaining it to me. Would it be rude to say that I don't CARE how it works, that I am just grateful that he has fixed it? Why have plumbers become like male hairdressers, who go on and on about the porous nature of hair, and all sorts of crap? Just do the job! When I am working for someone, I don't regale them with tales of research and grammar. I've been asked to do it, because they don't know how to. I'm happy; they're satisfied - end of.

Back to work, with huge bill from plumber in hand, and Boss says, "We need to go through some details". No, actually, we don't. What he means is, could I come into his office while he takes loads of 'phone calls, answers emails, and I sit there, the view from his window etching istelf into my mind forever, whilst I have a huge workload sitting on my own desk.

Then he asks, "Coming to the pub for a drink?", and I say, no. We quite often go for a couple of drinks on a Friday night, and quite a few colleagues were up for it this evening, but I just could not bear one more hour of legal chatter. Illegal chatter.......mmmmm