I would like to apologise for the delay in getting to work today. This is due to writing a poem. Thankfully, Janice is not back until next week so she wasn’t there to see me slip into my officle ninety minutes late.

Even at the best of times, my officle presents a distressingly joyless sight; not quite office, not quite cubicle, it exists in a permanent state of beige and bewildered irresolution. But there are few sights as depressing as my officle on the first day back after the Christmas break: tinsel droops around my PC monitor; an uninspired Secret Santa gift (yet another pine-scented candle!) sits on top of my in-tray, jilted at the altar of my ingratitude; abandoned corporate Christmas cards silently reproach me from the flimsy wall panels.

With the aid of a mid-morning Twix, I attempted to coax my brain into thinking about the report I’m supposed to be putting together for Janice. It has the working title of “Re-solutioning the Brand: from Customer Dissension to Retention”. I have yet to start it, mainly for the reason that I don’t really know what it means. Staring out through my officle window into the midwinter bleakness, I pictured Janice skiing down the slopes at Kitzbühel, the snow gleaming like powdered champagne.

Thursday January 4th

I wasn’t in the mood for poetry today. I think it’s all this work business. Larkin may have had his library stamp and Bukowski his mailbags but it strikes me that proper work is unconducive to the creation of poetry. It’s not easy to elevate yourself to a higher plane when your mind is being laid siege to by flipcharts and pivot tables.

The cat doesn’t help either. She is my furry straitjacket. Every time I sit down with the intention of writing, she sees this as her cue to lie on top of me and pin my arms down. My writing speed reduces to five words per minute; by the time I’ve physically managed to write a line, all previously imagined words and ideas have oozed from my brain like custard through a cattle-grid.

I cracked on with some more ISBNs instead. The project was proceeding apace and my bookshelves were beginning to look pleasingly resystematised.

Until, that is, I came to 1903436419.

I had all but forgotten it. Tentatively, I peeked inside. And, yes, there was the familiar spidery scrawl of Sophie’s writing, in the margins, next to my own. The love-notes we passed to each other in the back of a lecture hall, lifetimes ago, years before it all went wrong.

Friday January 5th

Everyday is like bin day

Everyday recycled and grey