The bells announcing the end of the vote send officials scurrying through the corridors barely wide enough to allow two people to pass without catching a whiff of after-shave or deodorant. Greased-back hair and pinstripes the uniform of the ruthless self-promotionalists milling in front of the chamber with expressions blank until the chosen target comes within visual range. Their gleaming-toothed smiles as sincere as a TV evangelist’s faith.

A colleague who recently succumbed to the after-effects of years of drinking was once stricken by a perforated ulcer on mission and abandoned to his fate whilst the delegation continued on its merry way without giving his condition a second thought. His credit card company took care of his hospitalisation and subsequent repatriation. We truly are invisible, soft targets when it comes to making savings, otherwise an unavoidable encumbrance, grudgingly tolerated in the name of preserving diversity.
The unremittingly grey sky spits raindrops on undeterred shoppers who dodge the spokes of umbrellas in plain colours or with institutional yellow stars. Brown puddles slosh beneath the tyres of limousines, condensation obstructs the view. No buskers strum guitars half-heartedly in the passageway above the building site for the sake of a few coppers.

At the reception following my Mother’s funeral, A, daughter of our former neighbours, recalled the afternoon teas she had prepared for us. Salmon spread sandwiches on plain bread with the crusts removed, slices of Battenberg cake, home made custard creams, shortbread, all served on the best china, milk jug, pot with woollen cosy brought upstairs to my room on a tray. A custom I had only read about in books in the days when I had not yet set foot in a restaurant.

Every Sunday, my Mother would cook a full Scottish breakfast: fried egg, black pudding slices (which I rendered edible by drowning in HP Sauce), sausage, French toast, bacon, mushrooms. She was proud that when we were at primary school we always came home for a proper lunch. Balancing the tray on my lap (the dining room had been converted to a nursery when my brother was born) I sat in an armchair in front of the TV set, the children’s slot cosily named Watch with Mother in line with the social expectations of the non-working class: Pogle’s Wood, Noggin the Nog, Andy Pandy, The Woodentops in black and white. We never ate together except at Christmas.

In our household, my lover is responsible for all the meals. I commute in to Waffle Central at 7.24, returning at variable hours each evening (though only rarely before 19.00 and a virtually unlimited extension of our working hours about to be formally announced), my son arriving back from school long before me. We live three parallel existences with our separate interests and computer screens. Aluminium containers from countless take-aways litter the cherry wood parquet.

Brute survival dictates that women must compete in the rat-race, although “emancipation” has not brought most of us equality of pay in spite of the statute books and threat of prosecution. We must outperform male colleagues to be taken seriously, yet at their booze-swigging lunches they reduce us to our reproductive capacity, assessing our desirability as opposed to our professional skills, token blonde invited along for decoration.