No one would have
believed, in the opening years of the twenty first century, that our
affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of Whitehall.
No
one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a
microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of
water.
Few men even considered the possibility of intelligent life in Government Ministries, and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded us with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.
(Apologies to HG Wells.)
CHAPTER 47 YOU HAVE MAIL
Ned Hunter walked past the registry area, met John Gilchrist and said “Does that daft cow ever do any work?”
“No. Never. Just as well though, she’d only mess it up.”
“So what’s the daft cow doing here?”
“Oh her husband is a private in some regiment or other, owes a lot of money. Big debts. So the CO said to get his wife, that’s Matildaaaaah, a job in the NAAFI. Which they did. But the NAAFI said they didn’t want her cos she was useless, so she went into the deployment pool and when the vacancy came up here she got it.”
“So why didn’t they fire her?”
“It’s the Civil Service. You’ve got to rob a bank or something to get fired from here. At least she’s only temporary. With a bit of luck they won’t keep her on permanently. But you never know in this place.”
“Bloody daft.”
“Wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t my boss,” said John
“She’s your boss?”
“Oh yeah. I’m an E2, but Matildaaaaah, is an E1. She gets more money that way to pay off her husbands debts.”
“Bloody daft.”
“She’s driving me bananas.”
“Bloody daft.” Ned shook his head and walked on towards the meeting.
“Ooooooh John,” said Matildaaaaah when he got to the registry “Don’t know what to do about that fax thing. I think it’s run out of paper.”
“I’ll have a look. Could you, uh….This is the post from their out trays, and this is for posting , and this is for filing.”
“Oooh, I don’t know about that, ever since I got those addresses wrong. It’s ever so complicated, all those initials and stuff. You must be a genius to know what it all means,” said Matildaaaaah
“I guess, I’ll see to it later. But this is all for filing, so maybe you could punch the holes in the corner? The top left? And put an enclosure stamp on? In the top right?”
“Oh right. Yes, I’ve done that before, haven’t I.”
“Yesterday, You were really good at it. I’ll go and see to the fax.”
John walked across the open plan area to an alcove holding the fax and photocopier. A mass of paper had been printed off from the fax. Tonnes of it. He sorted and stapled, working out what went where by the page numbers and originator addresses. Over twenty faxes in such a short time.
Weird. He reloaded with fresh paper and it started spewing sheets again.
John's stapler ran out, he took the heap of letters to his desk, got more staples and went back. They'd never had this many faxes.
Matildaaaaah was on the phone saying things like “Really…..Really?.......Not really……Really.”
“Hallo John? What’s all this?” asked George Tregennis.
“We are inundated with faxes. I haven’t had time to read them all, but they are all objecting to something or other.”
“What something or other?”
“This says the wildlife will be disturbed. This says the noise will be intolerable. This one says they don’t want their village demolished.”
“What village?” Jim Browner had come over.
“Kingsbridge in Devon,” said John.
“Oh ah,” said Jim “That’s down Plymouth way. I suppose it could be summat up with the Navy”
“The Navy aint going to demolish villages” said George Tregennis.
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