I suppose that the feel of the sharpness of the knife across the throat does wonders for the clarity of vision.

What I mean is that my sacking having been confirmed in that I have received the official letter inviting me to attend the meeting—May 5th—explaining why I will be sacked, the processus has started. Firing someone here in France is a quite long process—it will take them nearly 3 months to do so. And it is also full of dangers in that, if they don’t respect a mess of legislation and jurisprudence then the company can be taken to task. The penalties can range from reintegration of the fired person (very rare), to compensation—depending on the number and gravity of errors. Judging from MB’s track record and the mistakes they have already made, we shall have fun. I should not laugh yet however, as I imagine that there must be many a slip between gallows and here.

. . . . .

However since notification I have been working with marvellous concentration. Bill is completely revised and awaiting some readers’ reactions. Then I shall bundle it off to a couple of French editors. Can’t do any harm. Juliet which although it has been revised I don’t know how many times is being cleaned from start to finish. Any scene that doesn’t work, doesn’t flow is rewritten on the spot. No more changing the colour to blue as saying to myself, Yes, well I must come back to this at some point. When I’m sure that Juliet is clear then I must write the synopsis and the covering letter and send it off. Then I can get down to work on Pirates. The planning is nearly finished (well anything from half to three-quarters finished depending on what really happens when they split up…) but it is in sufficient state to let me work on it. I am also counting that I have learnt enough from revising Juliet to make that process a lot easier for Pirates.

Once Pirates is underway I can—by way of relaxation—work on planning Died. And develop the notes for the other ideas that I have jotted down in my notebook. Or pehaps I should revise the short stories that are sitting on my hard drive doing nothing. To see.

So, as I mentioned in the beginning, having the knife to one’s throat does bring a marvellous determination to get on with things.

Yesterday MB popped her head into the sort of cubby-hole at the end of the offices where I and the other member of IT staff have been relegated, “Can I see you today?” she asked. Undoutably this was becasue of my well-known habit of coming in to work invisible.

“No problem,” I said, “When you want.”
Both of which are true—she does sign the paychecks after all…

Later that morning when I was wading through a delicate bit of code, her head reappeared around the corner—I think that the body was attached but can’t guarantee it—“Can I see you today?”

Of course, I had already answered the question and it wasn’t very likely that my reply had changed in the last three hours, so I didn’t say, “Oh! Sorry! I’ll just make myself visible,” I instead did say, “Err… now?”

A sort of mumble, or possibly a gargarism, came from the head perched on the corner. She may have actually said something but as I was concentrating on what I was attempting to do—i.e. not break the site in an untoward manner—I wasn’t paying much attention. “Look, I’ll come as soon as I’ve finished what I’m working on…” As this is a more-or-less complete rewrite of the current website, this should take me about a month.

I arrived in her office 10 minutes later.
“How is the site going?” My earlier reply had been an error, she obviously supposed that the web site rewrite was now finished. “Not that I know anything technical…” she continued. Saved by a technicality.

“Should be done in about two weeks,” I mumbled. “Then we can look at it internally.” This is a innovation for this place. Except for projects that I work on, nothing gets tested here. Things just get thrust upon people. Both staff and clients. Then things inevitably break. ANd not necessarily the code either. I prefer to do my inevitable breaking discretely and so I am known to test first, in private.

“Of course, I’m very happy with your work. The site works wonderfully, never breaks down like before, and I have received lots of complimentary remarks.” Yes, and I have received a substantial pay rise…

Sorry about that, Mummy did tell me that I shouldn’t fib. So I didn’t get a substantial pay rise. In fact, I think that this is the first time ever I have been called into her office for praise. Can I see both of her hands? No hatchet under the table? No anvil suspended from the ceiling… I shift uneasily on my chair.

“And…” I manage to say.
“And, of course, we haven’t got enough work to keep you fully occupied. I was talking with (Hubby) only yesterday and he says that we have a maximum of three months work a year. Less in fact once you finish the changes on the site.” Please note the taseful use of of course. (Hubby), as I may have already mentioned, hates me. Nothing personal. He regards me with the same cold distrust as he reserves for anyone who suggets that perhaps all the company’s IT solutions shouldn’t necessary be coded in MS Access. They say that to someone who is armed with only a hammer, all problems look like nails. In (Hubby)’s case, all IT issues look like MS Access. I’m sure that he also uses it for web surfing and that this is why he complains about my coding—THIS SITE DOES RENDER CORRECTLY IN ACCESS! I can near him mumbling from afar.

“And…” is in fact what I say.
“So, of course, you have a permanent contract.” Yes, and you and (Hubby) insisted that I took it when you hired me as a temp as:
Point number one – you realised that you wouldn’t have to pay me the 10% precarity bonus if you took me on
Point number two – you’d never find someone else who coded as well as I did and who did it so cheaply.

“And…”
“Mumble, mumble, lack of work, mumble, mumble, results, mumble, mumble, reduce costs, mumble, mumble…” What she really wanted was me to roll over on my back, spread my little stubby legs in the air and invite her to scratch my tummy. Then she’d pull out a small plastic bone, throw it affectionately while I ran in circles, barking and panting good-naturedly before bringing back the toy. Then she’d throw it over a good, steep cliff counting that I’d follow it, still barking aimiably.

“And…”
“Mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble…” She has at this point entered aimless-mumble mode. This means that she will just mumble on, occasionally repeating herself. It doesn’t mean that she has no argument. It doesn’t mean that she has run out of arguments. Both of these cases imply that she had an argument in the first case. She always does this, believing that when she waffles, not only does it make sense, but that you can only agree.

When I had asked her for the n-th time for the 15-eurocent-foreign-language bonus that I was supposed to receive every month, she did the same thing. I interrupted her and asked her what she was saying.
“I was quite clear,” she said.
“No you weren’t otherwise I wouldn’t have interrupted you and asked you what you were saying.”
“I said that I will not shirk my responsabilities and that I will do all that is necessary.”
“That is what you said last month and nothing has changed.”
“I know.”

Finally I got bored and sent her a registered letter telling her to pay up with back pay, within the week. She paid up immediately and garumphed, “I can’t understand why people have to send registered letters, why they can’t talk to each other…” (Please note the elegant use of people). Quite simply because other people only react to registered letters.

So she is working herself up for me to understand that I should be fired. Preferably, I should understand her dire predicament and give notice tomorrow. That way I can work off my notice by finishing the web site. That, in her point of view, is the elegant thing to do.

And, make myself available as she suggested to come back from time to time when they need me to do more work on the site. She didn’t say that I should pay for the privilege, but it was implied.

“Yes…” I interrupt, “If you’d excuse me MB, I have a site to code. I suggest that we continue talking about this in (10 years time?) a month?”
“Oh yes. Well, we’ve said enough for the moment, haven’t we?”

This morning MB greets me.
“We must take down the fish.”
The fish is the gag that I had prepared for the website yesterday.
“It is Number One on my list of things to do today” I assure her.
This is false. Number One is switch on the computer as it takes hours to start. Then I make the coffee for everyone, and put the kettle to boil for that strange race of tea-drinkers with whom we co-exist. Then I launch iTunes for some music while I work, then Thunderbird to let it sort the spam while I connect in to the web site and transfer things through to the Intranet for the others when they start.
At last, with my coffee firmly in hand, then I will ‘kill’ the fish.

MB turns to leave:
“The fish doesn’t work in Netscape.”
I know what she means but I decide to play dumb.
“We tested it in IE and Netscape. I also verified in IE and Safari on Mac. It works everywhere.”
“But (Hubby) said it doesn’t work in Netscape.”
“It doesn’t work in Netscape 4, no. We agreed that it was no longer necessary to support a seven-year-old browser that was completely broken when it came out and that it should be quietly taken out into the back yard and put out of its agony and the body disposed of in a manner that is not contrary to any of the Paris zoning and Health regulations.”
But I don’t say that, I say:
“We agreed in the meeting the day before yesterday that we would no longer support Netscape.”
“Oh yes. Yes,” she says.

She will come back on Monday saying that the dummies of the new search pages that I am working on and which coded with HTML+CSS are taking up only about 1/3 of the previously table-laden code does not work in NS4.7.