New starter

Going back to work after a holiday is never an easy transition.

The process is made slightly more disorientating when you walk back into the office and find eight, beaming new faces have filled the empty chairs, all with an "I'm taking your job! Ain't it great? Hurrah!" air about them.

One of those beaming, enthusiastic little faces sits down in the seat next to me.

The seat was previously occupied by my hilarious yet opinionated, finger skin biting, tempestuous yet fundamentally likable Gay Colleague. Who, by the way, has disappeared; signed off sick for the remainder of the contract with a mystery stress-induced illness. Baffled by this exchange of old to new, I'm introduced to this bright eyed, bushy tailed person as the New Me; the boy selected to take over my job when the department moves in a little over a week.

Now, given that he doesn't know me at all and has my job in his overenthusiastic little clutches, personally, I found his first question after being introduced a little...how you say... insensitive.

"So! Have you got a new job then?"

Now, let's just think about this for a minute, dear lad. You are sitting in an office full of people who, unable to relocate to the other end of the country for whatever reason, are facing redundancy and unemployment. Most, nay, all of us are still here because the alternative is a bright square of light presented by Lorraine Kelly, Loose Women and Jeremy Kyle. Not because we've got new bosses lined up, eagerly awaiting our arrival.

We may be in high spirits, but stay a while and you'll notice a direct correllation between our high spirits and the diminishing pile of E-numbers on the newly coined Office Snack Table to my right. There's a bottle of red wine under my desk, which our team won for creating the best name in yesterday's Pub Quiz style competition, held in place of a departmental meeting. In short, we're being humoured. 'Don't be silly, you're still important! You're still valued team members! Look, come to a meeting!'. We did. There were sweeties on the chairs and first on the agenda was trivia.

Back at our desks, and us leavers are busy. Observe. When our fingers aren't having the skin picked off them, they're smashing records for quickest CTRL+Tab between Guardian Jobs and a Gmail Inbox.

It crosses my mind to tell him all this, but I decide otherwise, opting for a splutter of "Well no but maybe but got a few things in the pipeline might have something well got a meeting but don't know really we'll see something will come up".

And while we wait for all that to happen, there's always free red wine.