Okay, so last night I dream I've got to Holborn and need to get to an office in Archway which, according to my dream is Northern Line (my subconscious has memorised way too much of the tube map). For some reason I can't get a tube from Holborn so I have to get to Tottenham Court Road by bus, which turns out to be an old Routemaster bus. Oh, and I have to get a few quid from the cash machine and top up the Oyster (my subconscious is evidently fixating on hole-in-the-wall-machines).
Anyway, the dream jumps to me walking into the office, except it's an office as it was back in the mid-1980s when I first joined Marconi. It's upstairs in a rather grim building - no carpet tiles, just lino tiles. It's not open plan either. In the main office are 4 old wooden (teak-veneered chipboard) desks pushed together in the centre. There are 2 side offices off of the main office.
There are no computers. My desk has a stack of paperwork on it and a pile of archive boxes next to it and on the chair. The chair is an old-style 4-legged vinyl covered chair, not a swivel. I realise I have moved to this office and my blue swivel chair should be there. I find it at the desk opposite me and it has an archive box on it. I move the box and try to reclaim my chair. I am not senior enough to have a swivel chair. I explain that it's a specially adapted chair because of my back problems (this is true - but because it doesn't look much different I have had to paint my initials on the arms of the chair to stop others from pinching it!). No, only senior people in the office can have a swivel chair. I must use the black vinyl chair.
Then the alarm went off. It was very odd to find myself back in the small cluttered office with unergonomic desks and chairs. We don't notice how much everything has changed until we somehow find ourselves back where we started out. The grim office block, by the way, isn't in Archway (no idea where that came in!), but was demolished to make way for a Chelmsford housing development.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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2 comments:
Archway has enough grim office blocks as it is. Some good people in the council are trying to knock them down and build in their place a big building both aesthetically pleasing and stocked with wine - we're talking a Sainsbury's - and hopefully other such emporiums - but local busybodies are trying to stop it because they say the area's character will be changed forever. Yes, I say, that's the general idea. Maybe you have been dreaming of the minutes taken at their last action meeting.
It's sad enough to dream of tube and bus journeys, but dreaming of other people's meetings about grim offices? Maybe that was where I was headed.
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