2008, we love you

So, yes, it's 2008. It's the day after New Year's Day, which if you've got anything going for you, you'll have either spent in a hungover alcoholic mess, groaning on the sofa, or panicing about going back to work. I did the latter. "I'll be the only one in!", "there'll be nothing to do!". I remember moaning this way about school when it was Christmas, all the Muslim kids were off for (big) Eid anyway, 80% of pupils and 100% of teachers seemed to have severe flu. My mum made me go in despite protests that a much more productive day could be had watching "student TV" -- I used to tease my sister about being a student in the 80s, it was all so idealistic and in yer face and self-important. There's nothing so offputting while you're trying to think about whether to have Coco Pops or Weetos for breakfast when she was banging on about student union elections -- like cartoons and crap low-money bargain shows, and eating biscuits from the biscuit tin. I later learned in life that you could keep packets of things; not everything had to be immediately opened and shoved in to one free-for-all biscuit melee where the Blue Ribands were stacked up against the Penguins, juggling for room with the Digestives.

But school was bearable. Being the only one in the office is not. And I'm here while everyone else who's sensible in the world has booked this off as holiday, I am sitting on a reception desk in an empty school in Manchester, with only some window-cleaners and you lot for company.

Happy daze..........