expecting them to make some spontaneous gesture of protest, hardening their van to keep me out. (This can’t be alienation, can it? I want to belong. I’m dying to belong.)
At the other end of my journey a relatively small-time ordeal awaits: I have to call in to buy my sealed carton of tea at Dino’s, a little Italian-run café in the bowels of Holborn Viaduct. Dino himself, a foul-tempered ted with a great glistening quiff, is far too grand these days to prepare any dish less specialized than a Bovril-toast or a tomato-takeaway, so the quotidian hot-drink commerce falls to the old (British) dog and incompetent, Phyllis. Phyl, who is incredibly slow and bad at her job, goes onas if she’s
fucking
most of the people she sells things to. ‘Tea, Frank?’ and ‘That’s Ron’s orange’ and ‘Your coffee-no, Eddie’ — even girls get a smile and a fruity good-morning, and complete strangers, people who have come into the café not to
buy
things, not to give her and Dino
money
in exchange for goods, but just to ask the bloody way, will frequently be blessed by a ‘dear,’ a ‘love’ or a ‘darling’.
She has never spoken to me in my life
— and once, when the old cow was dithering with the plastic cups and I tentatively called her ‘Phyl’ (everyone else does), she gave me a look of such startling dislike that for a week I had to go all the way to the taxi-drivers’ sandwich bar in King Street. (I say the words ‘thank you’ five times a morning in places like these. Thank you for letting me in, thank you for acknowledging my presence, thank you for taking my order, thank you for taking my money, thank you for giving me change. The other day, in London’s Paddington station, I said the words ‘thank you’ to a hot-drinks machine. To a hot-drinks machine: it gave me a hot drink and I said, why ‘thank you’. This constitutes another Bad Thing that has happened to me recently. I think I’m losing my bottle. I think I’m going
tonto
.) Approximately the same treatment is accorded me by the whiskered doorman of Masters House, by its normally talkative and vivacious liftman, and by the tarty chars who tense on all fours in the carbolic vestibules.
Once inside, I begin to feel much, much better. Because nearly everyone here is as fucked up as I am.
I do a job. That’s what I do. (Most people do them. Do you do one? It’s what nearly everybody does.) For a while, after the school bit of my life was over, I bummed around (now where did I ever find the nerve to do
that
?), then I started to do this job. I was pleased when they gave it to me — I certainly didn’t ever want to give it back. I still am pleased, more or less. At least I won’t be a tramp, now that I’ve got it. I wonder why they let me take it away. (I think they think I’m posh.)
I don’t really know what I do here. Sometimes I want to say, ‘What do I do here — just in case people ask?’ I don’t know what I do here, but then no one really does. (This used to worry me, or surprise me anyway. No longer. When you’re young you assume everybody old knows what they’re doing. They don’t. Hardly anyone does. Hardly anyone seems at all clear on that point.) I sell things — so much is obvious. I
think
I buy things too. It’s all done by telephone; we talk about ‘items’. I am required to say things and to listen to things. Some of these things often strike me as possibly evasive or misleading or not quite 100 per cent true. But I shall say whatever I have to say to sell whatever it is I sell. What
do
I sell? Whatever it is, they pay me £50 a week for it.
We’re getting taken over — that’s for sure, also. Everyone is a bit sweaty at my work these days. We’re all having a bit of a bad time these days. It now looks as though we will be obliged (I expected this) to affiliate with the Union, regularizing staff rates of pay, holidays, office hours, luncheon vouchers, going to the lavatory, etc. In return, the office will
At the other end of my journey a relatively small-time ordeal awaits: I have to call in to buy my sealed carton of tea at Dino’s, a little Italian-run café in the bowels of Holborn Viaduct. Dino himself, a foul-tempered ted with a great glistening quiff, is far too grand these days to prepare any dish less specialized than a Bovril-toast or a tomato-takeaway, so the quotidian hot-drink commerce falls to the old (British) dog and incompetent, Phyllis. Phyl, who is incredibly slow and bad at her job, goes onas if she’s
fucking
most of the people she sells things to. ‘Tea, Frank?’ and ‘That’s Ron’s orange’ and ‘Your coffee-no, Eddie’ — even girls get a smile and a fruity good-morning, and complete strangers, people who have come into the café not to
buy
things, not to give her and Dino
money
in exchange for goods, but just to ask the bloody way, will frequently be blessed by a ‘dear,’ a ‘love’ or a ‘darling’.
She has never spoken to me in my life
— and once, when the old cow was dithering with the plastic cups and I tentatively called her ‘Phyl’ (everyone else does), she gave me a look of such startling dislike that for a week I had to go all the way to the taxi-drivers’ sandwich bar in King Street. (I say the words ‘thank you’ five times a morning in places like these. Thank you for letting me in, thank you for acknowledging my presence, thank you for taking my order, thank you for taking my money, thank you for giving me change. The other day, in London’s Paddington station, I said the words ‘thank you’ to a hot-drinks machine. To a hot-drinks machine: it gave me a hot drink and I said, why ‘thank you’. This constitutes another Bad Thing that has happened to me recently. I think I’m losing my bottle. I think I’m going
tonto
.) Approximately the same treatment is accorded me by the whiskered doorman of Masters House, by its normally talkative and vivacious liftman, and by the tarty chars who tense on all fours in the carbolic vestibules.
Once inside, I begin to feel much, much better. Because nearly everyone here is as fucked up as I am.
I do a job. That’s what I do. (Most people do them. Do you do one? It’s what nearly everybody does.) For a while, after the school bit of my life was over, I bummed around (now where did I ever find the nerve to do
that
?), then I started to do this job. I was pleased when they gave it to me — I certainly didn’t ever want to give it back. I still am pleased, more or less. At least I won’t be a tramp, now that I’ve got it. I wonder why they let me take it away. (I think they think I’m posh.)
I don’t really know what I do here. Sometimes I want to say, ‘What do I do here — just in case people ask?’ I don’t know what I do here, but then no one really does. (This used to worry me, or surprise me anyway. No longer. When you’re young you assume everybody old knows what they’re doing. They don’t. Hardly anyone does. Hardly anyone seems at all clear on that point.) I sell things — so much is obvious. I
think
I buy things too. It’s all done by telephone; we talk about ‘items’. I am required to say things and to listen to things. Some of these things often strike me as possibly evasive or misleading or not quite 100 per cent true. But I shall say whatever I have to say to sell whatever it is I sell. What
do
I sell? Whatever it is, they pay me £50 a week for it.
We’re getting taken over — that’s for sure, also. Everyone is a bit sweaty at my work these days. We’re all having a bit of a bad time these days. It now looks as though we will be obliged (I expected this) to affiliate with the Union, regularizing staff rates of pay, holidays, office hours, luncheon vouchers, going to the lavatory, etc. In return, the office will
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