Urgh could it really be Monday again? I swear Saturdays and Sundays are shorter than weekdays. Dragging myself into the shower I contemplated the week ahead. An endless stream of carting internal BS between arrogant middle managers and jumped up secretaries. And the pressure, as if anyone’s life would be impacted in the slightest way if that memo didn’t reach Tracy in accounts before morning coffee rather than after.

Enough. Just get it done. Five days and I’d be back on the mountains. It was the only reason I stuck the tedium at Fulton financial corporation. Lancaster was a shit-hole, but an hour to the Lake District and two to Scafell Pike. That crag made it all worthwhile.

Clocking in at 8:57 I collected the first batch of internal memos from my pigeon hole and began my route. Finance and Operations, Personnel and Enrichment (why not just call yourself HR for goodness sake, everyone knows your jobs out-bullshit even mine!), IT, then off to the big-jobs. Collect and deliver, smile and nod. ‘Oh this one is really important is it? I’ll make sure not to wipe my ass on it this time’.

Sally in Personnel and Enrichment. Always a high point of the day. She had the cutest little scar on her forehead. When I was bored (when wasn’t I?) I’d invent stories about where it had come from. It started simple - same way I got mine, right? Falling off a climbing frame in school, obvs. Too boring, It was the only unclothed evidence of a history of childhood abuse? No. she was too bubbly to be a child-abuse victim. Maybe she got it protecting a younger sister from a bully when she was 15. I liked the heroism of this one… Odds were, I knew, she’d gotten drunk and fallen off that bloody statue of Eric Morcambe on a hen party by the sea, but I couldn’t imagine her drunk and leary so I persisted in my dreaming.

She handed me a folded memo. ‘Suzie’, she whispered, ‘this one’s a bit personal. I know it’s not allowed, but…’

I took the note, and slipped it into Bob, the CEO’s, pile of memorandum. I guess she thought that being a girl meant that I’d ‘understand’, that those smiles I cast her way were simple camaraderie and friendship. Little did she know I dreamt of proposing to her at the crux of Ringwriath.

I took the west corridor towards the offices of the higher level of management. Glancing up and down, non-one to be seen, I unfolded the memo.

‘2nd floor stairwell. 3:15pm. S. xxx’

Hmmm… no addressee. This could be interesting. But whose pile to slip it into? Jimmy, our director of comms? Nah, he’d never take the bait. What about Nelson, head of IT? Might be the only thrill in his week. Why not.. In went the memo. I continued my rounds, smiling smugly to myself that today’s drudgery might, at least, be a little less relentless.