The Earlier Trials of Alan Mewling

Chapter 1

Alan Mewling did not believe that bad things necessarily happened in threes. Yet, in the space of a week his dachshund had tunnelled to freedom, his wife had eloped with the driver of a mobile lending library,  and his underpants, apart from the pair he was wearing, were stolen (on an otherwise sunny afternoon) from the Hills hoist in his own backyard.

The first of these occurrences – involving the dog – was a blow; the third – pertaining to the pilfered smalls – was cause for disquiet, while all three events, considered together, were reason enough for him to admit, at least to himself, that he was transiting through a less than equable patch.

However, the most disturbing aspect of these unfortunate phenomena was the fact that none of them was in the least anticipated. The miniature excavator (known as the the Monst, because of his frightening visage when roused) had left no piles of soil in the backyard prior to his daring escape; Eleanor Mewling had not signalled with a cheerier-than-normal disposition that she had, at last, found true love; and Alan’s Y-fronts had not at any earlier time been prized in smaller sizes or lesser quantities by opportunistic pranksters, perverts or paupers.

Adjusting to these changed circumstances – no dog, no spouse and, at least for a short while, no undies (on alternate days) – might have diminished the capacity of a lesser man to deal with further misfortune, but Alan was, it must be conceded, made of sterner stuff.

So, it was that, on the second Monday morning after the brazen theft of his drawers, and a fortnight before Christmas, he was little more than inconvenienced when an emergency meeting was called of all staff in the Publicity and Advisory Branch of the Department of Multifarious, Extraneous and Artistic Affairs.

The invitation arrived by email, the organisation’s newest communication medium. Elsewhere on the 7th floor of the Dulcie Gullet Building, surrounded by tinsel and baubles and supplementary Yuletide trappings, others received the news with less composure, for the new ministry had only been in office a few days and an announcement of Service-wide cutbacks was expected at any moment … pursuant to the usual discovery that the economy was in very much worse shape than previously thought.

In those parts of the branch staffed by refugees from tabloid turpitude and private sector spin doctoring, the response to the urgent meeting notice was the customary journalistic one to all bad news not requiring reportage: a desire for strong drink in large quantities, regardless of the hour.

In the Committee Support bay – so heavily encumbered with Christmas decorations that the original décor was unable to be discerned – Alan’s long-time colleague, Stephen Morton, in a beautifully tailored blue suit, was the first to comment on the portents.

Half of us will be looking for employment in the new year, he said, from between a pair of inflated reindeer and a pillow-stuffed Santa, while the rest of us will be working ourselves to death.

Alan abhorred hyperbole almost as much as he disliked the life-sized, fibreglass polar bear sitting on the floor next to him; experience told him that, although staffing cuts were likely, it was most unlikely that anyone remaining in the workplace would be required to apply themselves with fatal dedication. He nonetheless sensed an enervating gloom encroaching on his normal state of cautious optimism.

Romans 12, Verse 12, said Bruce Trevithick in short-sleeves, shorts and long socks, from the cubicle next to Alan’s. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be content in prayer.

Alan’s agnosticism didn’t usually prevent him from finding comfort in the scriptures, but on this occasion his apprehensions weren’t to be easily allayed.

Thank you for that, said Morton to Trevithick, but let’s see how patient and content you are when the tribulation ramps up and your own employment is on the line. And in the mean time I wouldn’t recommend too much in the way of rejoicing when your jobless colleagues are being escorted from the premises – not if you want to escape a lynching.

The Lord is my shepherd, Trevithick replied with determination, as Ernest Hemingway, the oldest member of the section, entered the bay, leaving a pungent trail of floral notes in his wake. Alan and Trevithick sneezed repeatedly in a kind of belated nasal fanfare as the fat man’s fragrance wafted across their work stations.

Good morning, my dears, said Hemingway, mopping sweat from his brow in a dabbing motion designed to not upset the precarious positioning of his ‘comb over’. Did I, perchance, hear mention of the love that dare not bleat its name?

There is nothing shameful about being a shepherd, Trevithick said.

Then why do sheep live in fear? replied the new arrival.

Alan moved the conversation into safer territory. You’re in time for an emergency branch meeting, he said to Hemingway.

And you don’t need to be terribly clever, said Morton, to deduce what it will be about, bearing in mind the timing.

So, the wait is over, Hemingway remarked, adjusting the drooping cluster of mistletoe above his chair. We’re finally to be told how much austerity we’ll be getting.

Think ‘lots of’ said Morton, "rather than ‘tragic shortage’.’’

Then, thank God for ladies’ clothing, said Hemingway. He’d once been a milliner and was disposed to reminding others, whenever cutbacks were rumoured, that he had an alternative means of earning a living. He turned his computer on.

It’ll be a case of ‘last one out, turn off the lights’, said Morton.

I’m sure it won’t come to that, said Alan, even if some downsizing is in store.

Don’t talk to me about downsizing, said Hemingway, half covering his mouth with his fingertips, while staring fixedly at Alan’s crotch. Most of us of us can ill afford less than we’ve already got.

Morton sniggered, Trevithick murmured ‘disgusting’ and Alan turned a deep shade of crimson while perspiring profusely. If Hemingway was suggesting that his (Alan’s) essential organ was of deficient dimensions – a contention supported, perhaps, by Eleanor Mewling’s decision to run off with the lady driver of a library van – he was appalled. If on the other hand, Hemingway was advancing the opposite argument vis-à-vis the proportions of his procreative protuberance – one that might, again, have been given credibility by Eleanor’s flight – he wasn’t any less embarrassed.

Code of conduct, Hemingway, warned a new voice from the corridor end of the bay.

The ex-milliner paled and turned hurriedly to his screen at the same time as his colleagues swivelled respectfully to face the new arrival.

Damian O’Kane, dressed in T-shirt and shorts, and sweating freely, was their alpha male: fit, fearless and ready for any bureaucratic ordeal. He strode to his window-adjacent cubicle and wriggled out of his backpack, which crashed to the floor.

Twenty kilometres, he announced, with eight house bricks in the knapsack.

He prised off his running shoes.

Magnificent said Morton.

"And two hundred push ups at the halfway point, with the bricks in place."

You’re just in time for an emergency meeting, said Alan, in the tea room.

Bring it on, O’Kane exclaimed, as though a crisis at the beginning of the working week was a thing to be relished.

I’m just glad the wait is over, said Morton, And that we’ll finally know where we stand.

Eyes on your screen, Hemingway said the athlete, removing his T-shirt. Don’t let me see you ogling my magnificent physique.

Everybody, including the ex-milliner, looked away as O’Kane changed into a fresh shirt and trousers.

Alan continued his trawl through the emails sent to him overnight.

I’m done, O’Kane announced, when his tie was knotted.

All five men rose and glanced at the closed office door of their director, on the other side of the corridor.

She really ought to attend, if it’s bad news, said Trevithick, voicing the widely held view that managers were rarely improved by averted adversity.

Director Committee Support, Lorrae Spaul, had not been sighted since early September and hadn’t spoken to any of her staff for a month before that. She was, however, thought to be in attendance.

And these are somewhat extraordinary circumstances, said Morton.

I suppose I could find out if she’s willing to engage, said Alan, pessimistically.

Then we’ll see you there, announced O’Kane, leading the little company out of the bay.

Chapter 2

Alan picked up a pen and paper, and positioned himself at Lorrae’s office door, marshalling the courage to knock.

He pretended to himself that it was inconsiderate of the others – and of Morton, in particular – to place the burden of communication on him. However, the truth of the matter was that he was the only member of the section with whom Lorrae would still interact.

That she was mentally unwell was beyond doubt but Alan had worked with more deluded persons, and weren’t there officers far above her in the departmental hierarchy who’d displayed more challenging behaviours? And, thinking objectively about things, madness was hardly reason to disengage ─ not when experts were of the view that a sizeable proportion of the population was, at any moment in time, to some degree unbalanced. More to the point, Alan couldn’t see why mental instability was necessarily an impediment to sound decision making, in the unlikely event that the making of decisions was considered preferable to resolute inaction or even studied indecision.

One knock, three in quick succession, then a further single rap, and he stepped back from the door to deliver the phrase which identified him to the recluse.

The cat sat on the mat, he said, in a crisp, clear voice which he thought more reminiscent of Olivier than Gielgud, Richardson or Burton. Then, thinking that he might not have spoken the second half of the sentence loudly enough, he repeated on the mat.

Not for the first time he wondered why the work of Dr Seuss should have been selected by Lorrae as the source of his unique identifier, when there were more profound and ‘just as memorable’ aphorisms in the works of more substantial writers… and when he felt no attachment (special or otherwise) to felines or floor coverings – at least nothing beyond a sense of satisfaction with an imaginary pet possessed of the good sense to sit on a rug (instead of burrowing under a side fence, departing the neighbourhood and leaving his owner’s undergarments unguarded).

Alan looked straight ahead, with his hands by his side, complying with the instructions Lorrae had left on his desk in a triple-sealed envelope soon after she’d decided to go into hiding. As required, he made a particular effort not to look at the point where the two curtains spanning the glass wall to the right of the door met: the point from which she presumably checked that he was, in fact, himself. He peered, instead, at the upper horizontal of the door frame and only looked down when he heard something being pushed across the carpet, over the sill.

Again, following the instructions he’d been required to commit to memory and then digest (in every sense), he looked to the left and right along the corridor to confirm there was no one approaching who might inadvertently sight the arriving note if passing by. When he was sure the coast was clear, he picked the sheet up. On its underside were the words: Very, very busy; two weeks behind, so briefly, please.

He turned the paper over, complying with the required procedure, and wrote on it Emergency meeting.

Out came the reply on a fresh piece of paper: Not today.

Not today in what respect? he wondered. Was she suggesting, having perhaps misread the electronic meeting invitation, that the branch gathering had been scheduled for a different day? His recollection of the relevant communication and the undeniable emptiness of the bays around him discounted any mistaken date theory. Besides, it was hardly likely that an email headed Emergency Meeting would be for a get-together on some later day.

No, she was probably suggesting that she didn’t want urgent converse with him. It seemed that, by being insufficiently specific, he’d caused her to think he’d been seeking such intercourse, notwithstanding the fact that they hadn’t met face-to-face since 11:25 am on the 9th of September.

A reluctance to see him was not inconceivable, even though he was well known for the clarity and brevity of his official communications. Then again, Lorrae may have been intimating a lack of confidence in the utility of (even) an impromptu branch assembly on that day.

Such a challenge to the modus operandi of the broader organisation, with its unassailable faith in the meeting as a panacea for quandaries, blockages and impasses of all sorts, was unprecedented, and presaged unthinkable consequences, more generally, for departmental processes. After all, a halt to meetings would free up the working day for the fast-tracking of submissions, policy statements and ministerial correspondence, and end the prevaricating, pondering and delay that had, over many decades, proved to be indispensable to achievement of the right outcomes.

For all that, though, Lorrae’s boycott of that day’s emergency gathering was undeniably in keeping with her ban on same-time, same-place interlocutions in the workplace and with her more general requirement to be left alone.

At that point, a new page emerged: What sort of emergency meeting?

Whole of branch, he wrote on the reverse side, thinking that she was enquiring about who was gathering in the tea room.

Out came her response: No. What sort of emergency?

He could almost hear her frustration.

Unspecified, he wrote.

‘Unspecified’ as in ‘general?’ she enquired.

As in ‘not yet known’, he sent back.

He looked at his watch. It was 9:04. As he waited for Lorrae’s next response, the newest member of the Committee Support Section, Barbara Best, a willowy red head, loped towards him. Car problems, she announced, as was her custom on Monday mornings.

Everyone’s at an emergency meeting in the tea room, Alan whispered.

I’ll head straight there, Barbara said, looking at the door of the section head she’d never met.

So, we have an emergency, the next slip from Lorrae read, but no one knows what sort it is.

Alan didn’t want to be unduly difficult but did think himself obliged to point out the deficiency in her thinking.

With respect, someone must know, he wrote, or the emergency wouldn’t have been designated as such.

But you don’t know that the alleged emergency is, in fact, an emergency, do you?

I don’t, Alan conceded.

Or what type of emergency it is.

True, once again.

Alan sensed that the exchange was nearly over and had not seen his communication skills used to best effect. Another piece of paper was disgorged.

Anything else?

Alan couldn’t think of anything that needed saying. No, he wrote.

Then, too busy (for alleged and non-specific emergencies), came the reply with the capitalised word END at the very bottom.

He pushed the note back under the door, as required by his instructions, and hurried away.

Chapter 3

Meetings in the department inevitably began eight minutes after the appointed hour with an announcement that the most senior of expected attendees had been detained by more important persons or by more pressing business. By the time Alan arrived at the tea room, he was seven and three-quarter minutes late, yet fifteen seconds early.

The branch head, Marcus Miserable Mecklenburg ─ a thin, pallid, worried man who’d been senior media adviser to a succession of disgraced government ministers ─ followed Alan into the room. After announcing that Brian Gulliver, their new first assistant secretary, had been ‘unfortunately delayed’, Mecklenburg wasted no time on additional preliminaries.

It is my melancholy duty to inform you, he announced, that, quite separately from any targeted savings which may yet be required of the department, this branch is to be abolished at the close of business on 24 December.

Alan’s heart raced and gasps could be heard from all corners of the room. Peaches Trefusis, Mecklenburg’s executive assistant, burst into tears and was led away by a first-aid officer.

People who are on contracts will finish up on Christmas Eve. Ongoing staff will presumably be subject to the customary redeployment arrangements, enabling them to trade positions with officers in secure jobs who are happy to transfer to our branch and be made redundant.

All the permanent staff, except for Miserable, himself, did mental calculation of how much their redundancies would be worth, using the standard formula.

The relevant unions have been informed, said Mecklenburg, that there are unlikely to be, at this stage, any forced separations of permanent staff.

The mention of forced separations stilled the hands of those whose journalistic instincts had been awakened by the press-conference-like circumstances.

Because I don’t know anything more than what I’ve just told you, there is no point in asking me any questions. I’ll tell you more when I know more.

A number of the journalists’ hands shot up, anyway. Miserable ignored them all. Thank you for coming, he said, as he headed out the door.

For the longest three seconds after his departure, the eighty people remaining behind stared at each other in mute disbelief. When the silence broke, though, there were as many questions and exclamations as there were persons present (minus, perhaps, one).

While some asked how it could be that a whole branch was to be summarily dispatched, others speculated about the particular acts of commission and omission which might have caused the new government to abolish them. Others – mostly contractors – voiced more personal concerns, wondering how they’d pay the rent, meet their child support payments or pay for their leased motor vehicles.

If Alan hadn’t been in a state of standing shock, he’d have heard Miserable blamed for the course of events because things always ended up badly with him, because he was bad karma/juju/news/medicine, and because he knew where the skeletons were buried. Other explanations he might have noted were ones to the effect that the journalists comprising most of the branch had done too good a job of talking up the department’s achievements under the previous government (not thought to have much substance), that they'd done too poor a job (again, not thought to have much substance) and that the new ministerial advisers had seen the names of too many one-time critics and detractors on the branch phone list (thought to have a great deal of substance).

Or it’s about none of that, said a grizzled old drunk who’d once been a press gallery bureau chief, and it’s to do with the page 3 girls.

The page 3 girls, said another old hack, glumly.

Opinions were fiercely divided on the extent to which the swimsuit-less models whose chests had once diverted attention from any newsworthy content in the rest of the newspaper, were to blame for declining community respect for the fourth estate – more to blame than, say, articles about cross-dressing clergy, peculating politicians and celebrity amours.

One thing led, as usual, to another, and attendees were soon embroiled in argument about the plummeting standards of modern journalism and whether the media had a role in shaping public expectations or were simply required to provide a low-brow readership with the philistine content it required (with or without a triple D brassiere).

While the debate raged around him, Alan thought about the advisory committee whose bi-monthly deliberations he had dutifully recorded and improved over the previous nine years. It seemed to him that all the effort he’d made to instil in committee members a respect for procedure, an understanding of ‘the possible’ and a sense of the sensible, had been a waste. Nine years of his life had – with a decision whose rationale might never be revealed – been rendered pointless. He felt an almost unprecedented sense of defeat.

Trevithick appeared at his side and said, in a concerned voice: Come on, Alan, let’s get you back to your cubicle.

Yes, we don’t give a toss for the page 3 girls, said Hemingway, oblivious to any onanistic irony.

Alan allowed himself to be led to the door.

Angry Eric isn’t going to let them get away with abolishing us, said Morton, acknowledging the negotiation skills of their union organiser and resiling, at the same time, from his earlier predictions of a branch laid waste.

Even if he can’t stop them from abolishing us, said O’Kane, he’ll give them what for. Not even I would like an earful from Angry Eric.

Morton flashed him a look that discouraged further pessimistic talk.

Yes, Eric will do some sort of deal and we’ll be fine, said Morton, as they moved along the corridor towards their work area. There’s always room for negotiation in these situations.

This would never happen in a central agency, said Barbara Best from the rear of the group.

Psalms 9, Verse 9, said Trevithick, The Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in time of trouble.

We’ve been caught in some crossfire – something nasty that’s got nothing to do with us, said Morton, some skirmishing or score-settling between apparatchiks and journalists … and someone will realise, soon enough, that we shouldn’t be peripheral damage.

Surely they wouldn’t abolish our committee, said Ernest Hemingway, as they reached their own part of the floor. Haven’t all the major parties had their snouts in our trough?

Now it was Hemingway who received a warning look from Morton. It’s true that each of the major parties has had the opportunity to appoint favoured sons and daughters to the committee, Morton said, but it’s the ecumenical nature of the membership and the different perspectives that our members bring to the table that makes their work so valuable.

And there’s always the possibility, said O’Kane, hoping to atone for his earlier defeatism, that the committee members will rally support and use their connections to see us right.

That’s certainly possible, said Morton, settling Alan into his cubicle. These are early days and anything could yet happen.

Alan peered sightlessly at his diary. None of the hopeful talk had in any way diminished his perception of the previous near-decade as one of industrious but futile effort. Yet it was the things the committee – his committee – had yet to do that he felt glummest about: the brilliant impossible initiatives that could only be achieved by a politically astute, well-connected group of ex-MPs and party operatives, unimpeded by restrictive terms of reference or partisan concerns, fortified by a generous hospitality budget and supported by a diligent and professional secretariat.

Others might have described the committee members as dissolute, burnt-out placemen, habitual sucklings on the government teat, and quasi-unrepresentative swill. They might, further, have rated the probability of a useful contribution of any sort from the group as negligible. But that was certainly not how Alan saw things.

And that was the reason for his mental collapse. His wife could leave him; his dog could burrow to freedom; degraded and immoral persons could even purloin his most intimate apparel – and he could carry on. Yes, he could carry on. But take away his dreams of a brilliant, innovative and purposeful committee – one setting the broader bureaucratic agenda and with the potential to revolutionise public administration – and he had little to live for.

He was unmoored and all at sea. His face left no doubt as to his despair.

Little wonder it thus was that Hemingway was dispatched to get him a cup of strong tea, while the others, at a loss as to further therapeutic steps, drifted away. They settled into their chairs and awoke their computers. And so engrossed were they in their emails that no one noticed when Peaches Trefusis approached and tapped Alan lightly on the shoulder. Only when she spoke, did everyone look in her direction.

Miserable would like to see you, Alan.

Alan isn’t feeling well, said Morton. Can someone else assist?

Miserable asked specifically for him.

I’ll be all right, Alan remarked, rising to his feet at the same time as a small germ of hope took root in his consciousness – hope that his committee might yet be granted a stay of execution or that he could successfully argue for its retention. With a growing sense of purpose, he followed Peaches to the branch head’s office.

Marcus Mecklenburg was sitting with his back to the door when Peaches knocked. A drip filter coffee machine was sputtering and burbling on the window sill to his right.

Alan is here for you, Marcus.

If only that were true, said the branch head, rotating to face his visitor and gesturing, with an oversized coffee cup, at the single chair in front of the desk.

Alan sat. More than anything else, now, he wanted to be told that the inclusion of the Committee Support Section in the abolition announcement had been an unfortunate blunder and that the government had since acknowledged as much. If that wasn’t likely, a second-best outcome would be an admission that his component of the branch was to be distinguished from the (doomed) journalistic elements in due course i.e. once the festive season had moved into its final, exhausted and incoherent stage, and the hacks were all resigned to their fate.

However, the determined set of Miserable’ s jaw led Alan to conclude that any hopes of a reprieve were ones held in vain.

Is there something you know that I don’t? Mecklenburg asked, without any solicitous preliminaries.

This was a question both unexpected and necessitous of careful consideration, for Alan’s knowledge of his fellow man indicated that there were potentially many things known to him – including the sadness of dashed ambitions and the bitterness of canine disloyalty – that even a person of comparable age and background, from the same workplace and with the same sensibilities, might not know.

Hmm. Something he knew that Marcus Mecklenburg didn’t? He recalled that there were persons with whom he had superficial day-to-day contact who knew little of the Punic Wars, less about the abduction of the Sabine women and nothing at all about the first and second triumvirates – persons entirely unaware of the murder of Caracalla, of the circumstances in which Caesar triumphed over Pompey or of the excesses of Tiberius, Domitian and Nero … but whose lives seemed, for all that, no less ordered, functional or meaningful than his own.

There were individuals he’d encountered, too, who were cheerfully ignorant of the life and works of Brahms, who seemed oblivious to the most fascinating interludes in the history of public administration, and who would, even in the best light, with the most powerful binoculars, have been unable to distinguish a female White-winged Triller from a female Cicada Bird.

He recalled long-standing colleagues who’d acquired no grasp of filing essentials and no familiarity with the Records Management Framework, let alone an understanding of the document security classification guidelines or the secure material storage instructions.

Indeed, it seemed to him that the concerns and pastimes of other people were so often, so comprehensively and incomprehensibly different to his own, that he and Mecklenburg were unlikely to be in possession of precisely the same facts about ... anything.

And what did he know, he asked himself, about his branch head’s upbringing, schooling, and extra-mural activities? There were likely to be, he consequently concluded, numerous things known to him that were not known to the other man … and vice versa.

He looked up. The branch head was staring at him as though he’d committed some mad, inexplicable act. Perhaps he’d spent too much time thinking about an appropriate response to the question which had been put to him. Perhaps, he thought to himself, he’d been over-complicating the matter.

You must know something, said Mecklenburg, getting up to refill his coffee mug from the drip filter machine.

This statement, by seeming to require Alan’s further consideration of his own store of knowledge, persuaded him that he’d been on the right path when thinking about the things he knew which others were unlikely to. It was, however, not an easy task to select a single fact or even an area of scholarship which encapsulated the most significant differences in what he and Mecklenburg were likely to have learned. And if he was only to nominate one something as representative of the differences in the knowledge the two of them had acquired during their four or so decades, what was it to be?

Anything? asked the branch head.

The idea of providing the first fact that came into his head – perhaps that actors had been banned, like gravediggers and ex-gladiators, from the Colosseum, owing to their low social status, or that George W McGill had invented the stapler or even that the Spotted Quail-thrush fans its tail in flight to reveal white tips – filled Alan with horror. Information of this sort wouldn’t or couldn’t be indicative or illustrative of the range of facts – arcane, recondite and esoteric, though some of them possibly were – he had acquired in the course of his years.

Yes, the problem was clearly one requiring more thought.

So, nothing at all, said the branch head.

I probably need a little more time, Alan at last replied.

But you’re not refusing to tell me what you know?

Most certainly not, although it may take a while.

To tell?

To decide.

I see, said Mecklenburg. Do you think you’ll have made a decision by, I don’t know… tomorrow?

I’ll do my best, said Alan.

Time is of the essence.

Yes, said Alan, even though he couldn’t see why.

Then I’ll have Peaches organise for us to meet, again, in the afternoon.

Thank you for your patience, Alan said.

Meeting concluded, said Miserable Mecklenburg turning to the coffee machine.

As Alan walked away, the question busying his synapses was one to do with timing: Why, of all times, was it now that Miserable wanted to know what he (Alan) knew? He could only suppose that, with redundancies in prospect, the time for leisurely enquiry had passed.

Chapter 4

There was no one in the bay occupied by the Committee Support Section when Alan returned to it.

They’ve all gone to a union meeting, said a woman behind Alan.

Azure Faraday, the most junior member of the Business Management Unit, was walking along the corridor with a can of soft drink in her hand.

If you’re quick, she said, you’ll still catch them.

The black T-shirt and jeans she was wearing would have been unthinkable office attire only a decade earlier but standards had declined so much, since Alan’s first day as a public servant, that he more often expected to be vexed by the bizarre than comforted by the appropriate.

In the tea room, Azure added.

Thank you, said Alan. He saw no reason to be impolite to a young woman, simply because the sides of her head were shaved and the remaining hair had been plumped and gelled into an erect black strip strangely reminiscent of a cassowary’s casque. I don’t suppose you’d like to join us … in the cause of workplace harmony?

Azure’s refusal to join the clerical workers’ union had been a source of disquiet since her very first day in the branch. Union membership may have been steadily falling in other departments but in Multifarious, Extraneous and Artistic Affairs, all the ancient tricks were in use to keep the numbers high.

You know I’m only moonlighting, until things pick up, musically she replied in a faint, abbreviated echo of her usual assertions to the effect that membership of the clerks’ union shouldn’t be imposed on minstrels whose public sector employment was intended to be of the briefest duration (and who were, in any event, financial members of the musicians’ combine).

This only moonlighting declaration sat uneasily with Alan – not because he saw any special merit in compulsory unionism or because he knew the bureaucracy to be filled with creative types who’d only intended to stay ‘until things picked up’. No, the statement disturbed him because he couldn’t understand how anyone, once exposed to the vitality and excitement of day-to-day public administration, could regard the bureaucratic calling as a lesser or secondary avocation. How such persons could persist with other aspirations or ambitions was beyond him.

And how an activity largely carried out in daylight hours, albeit under supplementary fluorescent illumination, could be described as ‘moonlighting’, was no less bewildering.

No offence, dude, said Azure, probably mistaking Alan’s puzzlement for dismay. You’re a cool guy, in your own way.

No one had previously described Alan as cool or as being of a temperature other than tepid, and he abhorred being referred to as dude, even though he’d have freely admitted to knowing nothing about cow poking (except that it was the principal activity of prairie herdsman and a pastime quite unrelated to the love that dare not bleat its name).

For all that, he bore Azure no ill will.

I’ll do my best for you at the meeting, he said, in anticipation of the usual motions to have the young woman declared a bourgeois individualist (despite her membership of a musical ensemble), a despiser of the masses (despite her desire to be idolized by the very same multitudes), and a Trotskyite wrecker (despite the fact that her guitar was the only thing she was clearly committed to destroying … and then only at the very end of a performance à la Messrs Hendrix, Townshend et al, once she was sufficiently rich and famous to afford a ready supply of replacements).