More real and coherent than the modern world

At the beginning of the week I was filled with doubts about whether my new job was working out or not. Things have not been very easy for me (although I get the impression that they have not been easy for most people). Publicly all due respect is shown to me to me by the senior managers and directors. In private however, I am treated with indifference (the best I have come to hope for), or suspicion and hostility. Mainly this is because I am not part of a big department and as a newcomer I don’t belong to any of the corporate cliques that exist at all levels of the organisation. There are times when I think I am doing well and creating a role for myself, but then an incident occurs that underlines just how marginal my position is.

For instance, just before I left on Monday evening, the Managing Director Marc Bottoni asked me to write-up the various stages by which the company would achieve the Strategic Plan, and have it ready for the sbu board meeting the next morning. I was quite angry at the impossible demands the task imposed, but by working most of the evening I had a draft ready that was presentable. When I gave it to him the next day he barely looked at it, and put it onto a heap of other documents that were on his desk.

This lack of consideration, combined with an oppressive corporate culture (the department heads take themselves very seriously) make me want to leave and find somewhere else to work. The problem is the salary is very good, and the working conditions are excellent. And the plus side to corporate indifference is that most of the time I am left alone.

The sbu (Strategic Business Unit) board meeting was apparently acrimonious, and throughout Tuesday morning it caused waves of fluster and excitement throughout the company as various people were called in and re-emerged with stories of argument and dissension. I was asked in mid morning to talk about the company magazine - immediately I stepped through the door I was aware of the very tense atmosphere. Marc Bottoni told me in a ridiculously formal way that the magazine would continue for the foreseeable future (later I learned there had been a determined move by some of the directors to cancel it as a savings exercise).

The meeting had allocated quite a substantial budget for the magazine, and this was very good news as it meant I would be able to afford professional photography, a proper designer (rather than doing it myself using InDesign) and a respectable print run. I was informed that the next issue of the magazine should include a major article on the recent retirement of a Group plc director. With that my “spot” in the board meeting came to an end, and I withdrew (no mention made of my Strat-Plan document - yet another piece of my work that just sinks without trace).

The rest of Tuesday I devoted to the magazine, and obviously I worked out that Marc Bottoni wanted to feature the director’s retirement as part of his own internal PR with Group plc (our ultimate masters). I rang the director, who lives in Suffolk, and arranged to go over and interview him at his home. Later in the afternoon I met with a design agency which had worked on the magazine in the past (I was not impressed with them - they seemed rather incompetent: “The company logo started off as a silhouette of St Paul’s Cathedral, but over the years bits dropped off the master artwork so that it became an abstract design…”).

Also in the magazine I decided to do a page on the European desk, going down to the next floor to talk to Clare Vyse (Supervisor of the European desk, she moved her chair so close our knees were touching) and loud work-placement student Scott Jura (while we were talking he answered the telephone with such a flourish that he accidentally smacked the receiver into his face. “You’ll have a black eye” Clare told him. “I’ve had black eyes before” he said nonchalantly, “it comes from having a big mouth”). I didn’t really need their help, I just thought it would be wise to be seen consulting people.

Missing from the floor was temp Maria, one of the few people in the company I actually counted as a friend (we shared an interest in mediaeval history). Maria had finally been offered a permanent job at the new depot opening in Thetford, and had moved to Suffolk. I decided that as well as visiting the retiring director I would also do a feature on the new Thetford branch and pay Maria a visit.

Wednesday I set off mid morning for the drive to Suffolk, listening to Radio 4 (The World At One was about the government’s attempts to impose a ninety day detention period on terror suspects). I took frequent detours by back roads, and at one point passed the writhing torsos of a bicycle competition, strung out along the lanes. About five miles beyond Newmarket I arrived at the retired director’s house.

His rural home was very elegant, and he and his wife were welcoming. We had some tea and I asked him how he planned to spend his retirement. He said he was an amateur artist, and he intended to devote himself fulltime to this hobby. The next hour consisted of him showing me an endless succession of landscapes and seascapes. They were very well done, and no doubt would sell, but there was a sameness about them that was rather boring. I felt my reserves of flattery and praise were wearing thin as he kept coming up with new paintings to show me.

Finally escaping from the retired director’s house, I continued on to Thetford - the drive across Suffolk took much longer than I anticipated. The building was on a business park, the architecture being late-1980s industrial functionalism. The offices were upstairs, and were shabby and untidy. The branch manager was out, but sales rep Steve Ellis was there, and insisted on telling me about his Quick Response service, which he wanted to go in the product development section of the magazine (I listened politely, but privately thought it a crackpot idea that will never sell). As well as Steve Ellis, there were two Customer Liaison staff at the branch, one of them being Maria. She seemed very pleased I had arrived, and had delayed her lunch break so we could go for a drink.

We drove in my car to a nearby village. She told me her move to Thetford had been a mistake - the office was claustrophobic and the work uninteresting. She also revealed that her new contract specified that she had joined the company under a “graduate entry” scheme, but mysteriously this was not the Group plc scheme, but something Marc Bottoni seems to have invented all by himself.

Walking around the village centre, through the drifts of orange autumnal leaves, we stopped talking “shop” and she described the dissertation she had finished last year on the monuments in Westminster Abbey and its role as a pantheon and Valhalla. This discussion of medieval art occurred as we passed the village church, and it seemed natural to go inside and have a look around.

Under an ogee arched doorway a heavy door led into a porch that was dark and windowless, the mid-afternoon light just illuminating a board listing the Ten Commandments (in clear hand-lettering of the early nineteenth century). The outer door swung shut behind us, and we had to carefully negotiate five steps down in complete darkness before going through another heavy door into the small nave of the church. Inside we found an impressive brass chandelier that reputedly came from Hampton Court Palace.

Not for the first time the ancient past seemed more real and coherent than the modern world.