So I'm on tenterhooks all day waiting for the phone call that could release me from audio typing for evermore, or at worst a few precious weeks. My mobile eventually rings at 1710 hrs when I have left work and am mooching round the retail park outside Greenwich (incidentally, I don't think Pets At Home should be right next to the McDonald's drive-thru; it looks very suspicious, even though Pets At Home gerbils cost £6.49 a pop and nothing that expensive goes into hamburgers).
It is the agency, but it isn't my contact, Kate; it is a colleague who wonders whether I'd be interested in starting work in Camden tomorrow stuffing envelopes for the NHS?
Well no I wouldn't, frankly. I have stuffed my fill of envelopes in my time and hope never to stuff another. I doubt the job is any better-paid than what I'm doing now, I'm reluctant to leave my current hosts and current agency in the lurch (though I would like a shot if something I actually wanted came along, natch) and, more importantly, it would mean abandoning my personalised 'Alice Is Purrfect' mug in Barking.
What of Kate and the job I actually signed up with the agency in the hope of getting? The job I can do? The job I want to do? "Oh. Kate's gone home. She didn't mention anything to me."
Honestly, had I had a gun I would have blown the back of my head off right there in TK Maxx. Now there's a sordid image.