Fellow mortals* – it will come as no surprise that, like many other entrepreneurs who have grossly overleveraged themselves, borrowing against the value of one of their many tropical islands (I’m looking at you, Branson), this pandemic has hit me hard financially. The Panic Office, once thought too big to fail, like Lehman Brothers or Woolworths, is now on its knees.
While I may lack the breath-taking audacity required to ask the Government to be bail me out (Why do you keep catching my eye, Branson?) I fortunately do possess the slightly less breath-taking audacity required to attempt to furlough myself.
I did so to recoup 80% of my salary – or at least up to the flimsy limits that the scheme allows; my salary is currently about 7/8ths of the total £6.8m Office budget – to see me through these difficult coming months in my toilet paper palace (I just can’t seem to get through the stuff quick enough even though I am as irregular as a plasticine clock).
Naturally, I then set out to find a temporary managing editor to do my work on the cheap. I’ve also got to spend much of my time fending off fresh charges of seditious rhyming schemes and improper use of iambic pentameter levelled against me, but that’s only a passing problem.
Of course, not any old managing editor would do. No, the Office demands a certain someone. Someone combative and regressive; someone with innumerable character flaws ripe for exploitation, and a litany of malefactions for me to hold over them; someone to vigorously castigate the staff when they have grown numb to my own drunken reprimands; someone phlegmatic and unflinching in the face of amorality, malfeasance and depravity; above all, someone with a working knowledge of the arcane and constantly shifting rites, regulations and lore of the Office itself.
In short, I needed Jones.
And so, a scheme was hatched, and orders disseminated through the remaining Panic networks, demanding the immediate identification and capture of all cadaverous, bearded men in the region, backed of course, by a substantial financial inducement.
14 hours later, Jones hurled himself through my office window - 12th floor mind you; the pigeons were most distressed – stating that he had apprehended himself and demanded payment.
The following is an (in)complete, (de)unexpurgated transcript of the job interview/disciplinary hearing which followed:
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RM: Interview Begins, the time is 15:67 on the 45th of July, nineteen ninety…sixteen. We are located in conference room L, overlooking the Waddington Quad. Chair of proceedings, the right honourable Viceroy & Lord Protector, Sir Reginald ‘Richard’ Wyndham Maslin III, Editor in Chief presiding. Please state your full name for the record.
RJ: …
RM: Come on now, there’s a chap.
RJ: …
RM: State your name or I’ll forcibly loosen your tongue.
RJ: …
RM: Listen you defiant wretch, it was you who devised the deprivation of liberty clause for the contracts of employment. Now state your damn name.
RJ: The defendant is Lord Professor Ríkharð Tiberius Arcturus Jones, latterly Associate Deputy Editor.
RM: May I remind you that it is strictly forbidden for any employee except the Editor in Chief to refer to himself in the third person.
RJ: Clause 42, amendment 67/F of the Appropriate Comportment & Acceptable Conduct act of ’79, which superseded the traditional agreement that whosoever was loudest and drunkest had the floor. You just can't bellow and booze like old Reggie could.
RM: 67/G actually. ‘F' was the clarification to the ban on frottage between officers of unequal rank during budget reports. Now, you’ve wasted enough of my exceedingly expensive time already, the moment for grovelling prostrations, convoluted extenuations and enormous bribes is rapidly retreating. If you intend to weave an elaborate fiction with which to shield your hide then be quick about it.
RJ: No, that’s 76/G. 67/G permits amendments 4 through 19 to be disregarded in the event of an inadequate soup dish. But what was 76/F?
RM: You have nothing to offer in defence of your actions?
RJ: I believe my intermittent drunken missives speak for themselves.
RM: As you wish. Question the first, where the ruddy arse have you been?
RJ: I’ll ask the questions here. Now where were we? Ah yes, tell me, are you any better at dodging ashtrays than you used to be?
[a startled grunt followed by a violent crash is heard]
RM: Well I suppose that was to be expected. If only you could be induced to direct your ire towards the lower end of the social scale with any degree of consistency. I ask again, where have you been?
RJ: Stewkley. Compassionate leave.
RM: Compassionate leave? For the best part of 3 years?
RJ: Well, the office is well known for its compassion.
RM: But Stewkley of all places?
RJ: Mm, rather convenient actually, I’ve been needing an excuse to go for some time. I had several items of a …sensitive nature to recover from a buried strong box. Jail sentences do seem to fly by when they’re being served by others, don’t they? I shall need the number for your chap in Cairo, and I don’t suppose you happen to remember the name of the amoral sea captain who got us out of that spot of bother in Venezuela?
RM: Ah, Venezuela! Seems like another life doesn’t it? I shall have Snivellsby look into it. I think I have a man called Snivellsby anyway. Don’t think this settles matters though! You can’t just breeze back in here like you’ve never been gone - there must be ramifications!
RJ: Surely you’ve not forgotten amendment 76/F? It is of utmost importance that there should be seen to be ramifications for poor conduct and bad form, and that this takes precedence over all other considerations, including the institution of any actual sanction.
RM: Well, it is a most irregular reading of the amendment, but not without legitimacy...
RJ: Exactly, just write it up and file it with the others. I’ll be in my office.
[RJ exits the room; or, to give it the due Shakespearean level of flounce: Exeunt. RM pours himself a dusty glass full of cognac]
RM: Oh yes. He’ll do.
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*For what has this whole ghastly period taught us if not of our own frailty? The value of community? The importance of the low-paid to the effective functioning of society? Bah - of course not! It has taught us that the mortal coil is narrow, treacherous underfoot, and we are wearing impractical clown shoes.
