Flash: Atypical Week at Work

Monday. My new PA arrives. I have dressed smartly. So has he.

‘Right,’ I tell him, ‘You are  my right-hand man.’

‘Right’ he replies and I know we are going to get on.

I have a list of things I want doing. He makes a list and gets them done. A productive day.
 

Tuesday. Today I do not wear a tie. Neither does my PA.

I hand him my list of requirements.

‘I’ve already done these before you arrived,’ he tells me.

It is a quiet day; no meetings. I shuffle paper, try to look busy and end up watching funny cat videos. He reorganises the office, tries to look busy and ends up watching philology videos.
 

Wednesday. I wear a seventies tie. My PA arrives in a flower-power shirt.

‘We are going to have a creative day,’ I tell him.

We draw pictures of mutant animals on the white board and then run around the office pretending to be each other’s creations. I particularly enjoy being a giraffaphant. I phone my management team and be cattish or doggish, depending on the flip of a coin. He calls my key clients and is gerbilly or leonine depending on the flip of a coin. He gets meetings booked with every one of them.
 

Thursday is a day of meetings. We both arrive in blue suits. Mine, of course, is more expensive but I admire the cut of his. He is the height of professional efficiency, briefing me on clients’ eccentricities, showing them in, minuting, making coffee, prepreparing contracts. We seal every deal.

At 5.45 I turn off my PC.

‘Would you like to go for a drink to celebrate the day’s successes?’ I ask him.

‘Yes,’ he says yes and I notice, like me, he doesn’t phone anyone to say he will be late home.

We share a 2010 Chateauneuf Du Pape. He enjoys my stories and I enjoy his. I tell him about when I worked in a circus and he tells me that he was once an alchemist but now confines his experiments to the culinary. He talks animatedly about baking artichoke bread.

‘You would make a good wife,’ I tell him and he blushes.
 

Friday, we both come in late and a little sheepish. I notice he hasn’t ironed his shirt, then see that I have spilt breakfast down mine. I mumble my requests and he is almost mute. The day drags. At four I tell him he can leave early.

‘What are you up to at the weekend?’ I ask.

‘I’m stuffing figs with peanut butter and making chutney.’

‘I live on ready meals,’ I confess, ‘expensive ones, mind you.’

He smiles and goodbyes me and I notice he has very beautiful green eyes. He will make someone a good wife, I think, after he has left. I remember my bare larder, then quickly put my coat on and run to see if I can catch him in the lift.