The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 2069 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I finished my marking and flipped a coin to see if I slashed my wrists or went for a cuppa. It chose the cuppa, which meant I had another lot to do tomorrow. No wonder the alcoholism rate is so high amongst university lecturers. I walked through to Pippa and asked if she fancied going for a snack lunch, she nodded and saved what she was typing.

We strolled up to the staff refectory and I paid for a tuna roll and a cup of tea for myself and a cheese salad and a bottle of mineral water for her. “Oh there’s a letter for you down stairs.”

“Is there?” I asked diffidently.

“Yes, the dates of council meetings for the year.”

“You could have waited until I’d finished eating before you mentioned such an unsavoury thing.”

“Well you got yourself elected.”

“No I didn’t, that was Tom and the Dean.”

“You could always resign, you did on the science committee.”

“Only because I was the only woman there and they asked me to make the tea.”

She smirked. “I get that all the time.”

“I’m sorry but that tends to go with secretary and PA type jobs.”

“It’s still sexism.”

“Only because they rarely appoint men in secretarial posts.”

“Cathy, I thought you were a feminist?”

“I am.”

“You don’t sound like it.”

“Look, I’ve been there done that and don’t have a lot to say about it.” I did but I thought she was whining.

“You’ve done my job?” she sat back and looked at me afresh.

“Yeah, not as professionally as you do it, but I’ve been a secretary.”

“When–do tell?”

“I told you I had issues with my father over my gender identity?”

“Yeah, and?”

“Well he did a lot of work for some property developer in Bristol, surveying.”

“And..?”

“I’d just finished school, it was June and I was waiting for my A-level results.”

“I bet you got straight A s, didn’t you?”

“Not quite, I got three A and one B.”

“What was the B in?”

“Dressmaking,” I said keeping a straight face, “I wasn’t very good at doing button holes by hand in those days.”

“You did Dressmaking at A-level?” she almost shrieked.

“Sure–in a boy’s school?” I sighed and she glared at me before we both chuckled.

“So your story about being a secretary is just a leg pull as well is it?” She sounded as if I’d patronised her.

“No, that’s true.”

“Well...?”

“Oh alright,” I took a swig of tea and started my tale. “I had about three months which I’d hoped to spend lazing about. I was eighteen and had spent the previous two months working my socks off. Dad came to me and told me I had to find a job. I told him I was exhausted and he said I could have two weeks to recuperate but then I had to find a job or he’d do it for me.”

“Was he ever a teenager?”

“Yeah, but so long ago he’d forgotten–but he also pushed himself quite hard and expected everyone else to do the same.”

“Oh okay, carry on.”

“We had a computer at home and he asked me to do some letters for him, you know, type them up. He could do them himself but he was so slow.”

“I’ve seen you type, Cathy, you’re pretty quick.”

I shrugged, “Anyway, I did a whole pile for him and mail merged and things like that. He took me into his office when his secretary was off for a few days and he paid me what he paid her, which was okay and probably more interesting that stacking shelves in a supermarket.

“She came back to work and I just did the odd thing for him and he continued my allowance but urged me to find a job. I really couldn’t be arsed if the truth be known, I was still trying to sort myself out and he came home one evening and played hell with me. I honestly thought he was going to hit me he was so cross.”

“What he’d hit a girl?”

“Um–I wasn’t presenting as one then, if you remember?”

“Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting,” she blushed.

“Mind you I had very long hair, so I probably looked like one much of the time. Anyway, he suddenly announced he’d got me a job. I was flabbergasted, especially when he told me it was a temporary secretary to this developer bloke. I was to be at his office at half past eight the next morning. He gave me the bloke’s address in Hotwell’s Road near Park Street, up near the university.

“So next day, wearing a shirt and tie I duly appeared. Angus Andrews wasn’t too impressed but he was short one of his secretarial team and just dumped me on his PA who checked out what I could do. Let’s face it, a lot of office work could be done by a six year old if they could reach the top drawer of a filing cabinet.”

Pippa glowered at me, “Huh, organise your own conference then,” she pouted.

“I meant filing and typing basic letters. Anthea, that was her name, showed me the ropes and by the end of the first day I was up to speed and doing much of the audio typing and answering some of the phone calls. Yeah, that was a laugh.”

“Why?”

“They all thought I was a girl on the phone, the callers, so it became a bit of a joke in the office and they all started calling me Charlotte, even the boss did when he phoned in and I answered it one lunch time.”

I remembered it only too well. “Hello, Angusand Developments, can I help you?”

“Anthea?” came the male voice.

“Uh no, she’s at lunch, might I take a message?”

“Who is that?”

“It’s Charlie, might I take that message, mister um...?”

“It’s Mr Andrews, Charlie.”

It took me a moment to work out who that was. He usually rang on Anthea’s own line but that switched through to my phone. “Oh, hello, sir, would you like me to ask her to phone you back?”

“No you can probably deal with it, I need some notes urgently...” he gave me the chapter and verse and I had to call up a courier to collect them and send them off to his site meeting somewhere near Swindon. After that whenever he came into the office he called out, ‘Hello ladies,” which at first made me blush and the two women who worked there with Anthea to chuckle.

I told Pippa about this and the fact that one of them complained that they had to wear skirts while I was allowed to wear trousers. I almost agreed to wear a skirt too, but after my experiences in school, I was a bit wary to say the least and I was extra sensitive about people knowing.

Dad must have known about my voice on the phone because he was always confusing Mum and I when we answered it if he called home. I worked in the office for six weeks and they told me I could go back any time I was on holiday.

“So did you do that while you were at university?”

“No, the poor bloke had a coronary and died the next Christmas. It was a huge funeral which Dad and I went to.”

“So no one took his business over?”

“No his wife sold it all off to a competitor and went off to the Bahamas to live–she was a bit younger than him.”

“No children, then?”

“I can’t think, might have been one but he’d have been quite young.”

“So, did you enjoy your experience as an audio typist?”

“It was okay, I preferred lab work to office work and field work to lab work. The next summer holiday I got a job in the university laboratory doing microscopy–making slides for students–I enjoyed that. We also used to sell them to the local schools in Brighton, the slides we weren’t going to use.”

“So, you’re a multi-talented young woman?” beamed Pippa.

“No, I’m not doing it, whatever it is...”

“Spoilsport–it won’t take you long, you’re so talented...”