Great for getting the angry person in your office back!
Being a secretary for the Chief Whip in this government has very few perks. In fact, I struggle to think of more than one. The one I do have is that I get to make his life a little more difficult than it could be. It’s my one pleasure in this job. My admin team are good as gold and do most of the work that is put to me. On the whole we give him very little to moan about. That doesn’t stop him having one of his enormous tantrums most days, though. We’ve got a little bet going — on the amount of times he swears in one sentence. Seriously, these posh public school types swear more than any squaddie I’ve ever met. I’ve got my bet set on every other word, I’ve won a few times too. The team have shorter amounts of swear words for their bets, although no one has between one and three, there is just no chance he would stoop as low as that in a paddy.
He’s drunk most days by 2 p.m. Some lunch or other with one of his old school pals usually descends into an afternoon of brandy and cigars in front of some fireplace or other — normally in someone’s office or chamber. That’s the best time to prank him.
We ran out of pranks after the absinthe in his coffee, plus some of the more junior workers, who hadn’t been subjected to as many tizzy-poos as the rest of us, thought that making him sick up burning fluid from his nose was a bit too much.
That’s when I suggested they think of some other stuff. This book was a birthday present to me from one of the girls. I have to say, having this in the office has certainly upped the amount of swearing. I could be in with a chance of winning the bet at this rate. One of the best was when we changed all his appointments round on the same day the IT bods were upgrading the server. He left in the morning thinking he had a clear afternoon and, as always, returned around four, drunk, to make sure there hadn’t been too many important emails from the PM before getting changed into his cycling shorts and heading home. However, what he didn’t realise was that the Home Secretary and the PM were coming for a meeting at 4.15. He was just pulling up his tight shorts when they walked in. I managed to see a little of his reaction as he realised what day it was before I closed the door, as I always do when leaving. He looked like a pathetic child who’d messed himself and been caught trying to change himself before he was old enough to. The PM and Home Secretary left the room shortly after I heard raised voices, looking a little flustered.
The next day I won the bet on swear words. I think one of the IT blokes got it worse than we did.