Blank Jigsaw

I do an exaggerated stride out of Blackfriars station so people know I’m moving right ahead and don’t plan to swerve. I’m already 15 minutes late but I tell myself that’s not so bad and besides, isn’t everyone? No, come to think, it’s only ever me.

Outside the New York Melon two police vans idly monitor the cluster of animal rights activists; rugged banner-wielding liberals chanting at commuters. I wonder who the hell they’re talking to and when I realise its my own office building, I feel a smirk coming on, like it’s so absurd I have anything to do with it. ‘End this cruelty!’ yells the megaphone man, ’End this Madness! Shut down the New York Melon!’ But the pee coats and white shirts just purse their lips and pace on by. What are they supposed to do? Go home?

Two chatty law-firm women in the lift joke about lay-offs. Who’ll be next? Wasn’t Alan a bit funny this week? Maybe he knows it’s him! They laugh, but I hope they will be next. My word, this lift is slow.

I am nothing without coffee. In a windowless kitchen we all wait for two kettles to click, so that steamy lava might make manna of our rat-shit gravel. I see that the kettles are new. So does the office comedian, who turns to his friend with a hooked grin.
‘Who got laid off to pay for these bad boys eh?’
His friend winces slightly, mouthing an ‘o’, gazing at nothing in particular.

It’s half nine so I get cracking, insofar as anyone ‘gets cracking’ with data entry. It’s like trying to piece together a jigsaw with infinite pieces that will never resemble anything. I’m sure there’s some specky twit who claims that actually, there’s a certain beauty in statistics, but if I ever meet the guy, I’ll throttle him.

I rub my neck and sigh after three hours’ trawling through the perpetual spool of articles, stories, comments, more items than there are things actually occurring, as if words of narrative somehow emerge from the ether, spiraling simultaneously to the events themselves, reporting and dictating each other as they come into being. My mind is saturated with buzzwords, scandals and cataclysmic predictions.

This is my job.

This is my society.

Gordon Brown cries in cabinet meeting, Jade Goody’s illness is spreading, Mother claims Facebook is to blame for daughter’s death, Leading economist says new downturn is “dire, disappointing and bleak,” as richest countries literally unable to export, Unemployment at new low, teen pregnancy at new high; Graph shows new link, Millions scream as Obama proclaims “we will emerge stronger than before”, while government faces 1.2 trillion dollar deficit, Massive liger mauls US volunteer to death after he enters its cage, PMs fears Labour rebels could bring about collapse of Government, Jade Goody Has 40% chance of living, Britain is failing to stop illegal immigrants heading into the UK from Europe, Psychologists find gene that makes people optimistic, raising fresh concerns for majority who lack it, Children’s TV actor jailed for child pornography offences, Blunkett warns over ‘Big Brother Britain’, Brown says ‘depression’ instead of recession in speech, Amy Winehouse is back on crack, Thirteen-year-old boy copulates with anaemic same-age playmate to produce soggy doomed newborn.

Civilisation is falling apart.

On MSN messenger my employer, asks:
“How’s it going?”
I wonder what she means by ‘it’, and - for that matter - what ‘it’ ever means.
I say, “Could be worse.”
She says “lol!”, and inserts a full-blown animoticon, tears bursting, fist smacking an invisible table. I wasn’t even trying to be funny.

But I suppose it is, really, when you stop thinking about it.