I am currently working as a temporary secretary in an HR department: a job that requires fast fingers, a professional level of subservience and glasses perched on the end of my nose. I'm there purely to type the minutes; to sit in the corner of the room and record what is being said during meetings, and then to quietly clean up the mess I've made of the notes and hand them over before scurrying back to my desk with my hand across my face so that nobody knows what I really look like. Which I did, admirably, for the first week or two: mainly because I wasn't even remotely interested in what was happening. It's easy to be professional when the topic of conversation is policies and legislation and the condition of the toilets.
In the past week or so, however, I've been asked to record disciplinaries; to sit, quietly, and type up exactly what has been said. And I've found it fascinating. It is, essentially, real life stories: tales of jealousy, heartbreak, anger, revenge, hurt, all played out in a tiny little meeting room with too much air conditioning and dust on the blinds. It's like pocket Shakespeare, and I've not been able to stay quiet in the slightest. I've specifically asked to be put in the 'other side' of the hearing, even if it means missing my lunch break; I've stayed late so that I can record what the other person says; I'm asking questions that I have no real business asking; I'm giving my opinions when nobody has actually asked for them. Yesterday I was the only person to sit through two sides of one disciplinary (a 'his' and 'hers' of anger and hurt and downright childishness), and - when she had been fired and cried and I had very nearly cried all over my computer - I glared at him for the entire two hours and promptly told the manager during the adjournment exactly what I thought of the little git who had caused all the problems in the first place. Luckily, this particular manager found my fierce stance quite amusing, but there's no doubt at all that - with a different, less lenient boss - I may have ended up back in the employment office (with the girl I had been so vehemently defending, quite possibly).
I wish I could write details about these cases - I'm absolutely aching to - but conscience and contract dictate that I can't. The point is, however, that no matter how shut off I always try to make myself when I'm temping, I'm still me. I can't escape myself. I can't hear half of a story: I can't not get emotionally involved. I didn't speak to anyone for at least two hours after the girl got fired because I was so angry and upset, and my chin was wobbling uncontrollably when a gentleman stopped talking half way through a sentence so that his voice didn't break. I try to concentrate on the job, but I can't stop myself caring. And I can't stop myself jumping in with an opinion as soon as there is a gap in the conversation large enough, or trying to defend what I think is right even when it could get me in trouble.
"Japan?" my best friend said a few days ago. "Huh. Cool." And then she looked at me. "Are you running away again?"
"Nope," I said. "Not this time."
She stared at me for a few seconds over the shoe rack in Primark: concerned and fiddling with a price tag.
"You can't leave yourself behind, you know that right?" she said eventually.
"I know," I said. And then I grinned at her, because I love that she knows me so well, and I love that she loves me enough to tell me. I picked up a shoe. "But I think I might be getting to the stage where I don't want to anymore."
The bits of me I spend half of my life trying to escape from, I've realised, are never going to go away. I can't do anything about it: whatever country I'm in, whatever office I'm in, whoever I'm with, I can't run away from myself. But - maybe it's age, maybe it's tiredness, maybe it's drugs - I'm not sure I mind anymore. Whatever it is that makes me me will stay the same wherever I am, and whatever I do, and whatever role I put myself in, and that - for better or for worse - isn't such a scary thought after all. I can't escape my own minutes, because they're all laid out behind me and in front of me, even if I can't see them. Maybe all I can really do is keep writing them down.
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