Bum On My Lounge Floor

It is the 7th April. I really should be sitting in my new office, peering through my window blinds at the lunch hour traffic as I procrastinate my day away in blissful daydreaming. Yet, I still find myself engaging in an extended liaison between my bum cheeks and my lounge carpet because I have to work from home. It has been more than a month and the new office was meant to be ready before the Germans surrendered. They say I’ll be at my new desk next Tuesday, but I know that with a bit of luck, I should be happy if the office was ready before Christmas.

Working from home is not easy. Apart from having to work on the floor, there are the distractions of mid-day TV programmes like Oprah and Judge Judy and self-inflicted commitments such as keeping my PSP company and regular testing of the springs on my Slumberland mattress. There is also Raft the furry white cat. Raft is my neighbour’s cat and I have taken a keen adoration for it. I’m not really cat lover, but since I spend so much time at home nowadays, Raft is my only window for mammal-mammal interaction. He is a really adorable cat with fur soft as erm…. fur, and a face that looks perpetually squished against a glass door. I think I should stop letting it into my house, as I suspect that the owner smells something fishy, and that is not just the tuna and chicken treat I feed Raft when I’m in the mood for feline affection.

Work is also getting increasingly demanding. Despite spending more than 2 years in my research, it only just occurred to me that PhD is actually a difficult ordeal. Most candidates would have figured that out in the first six months, but I say why waste time worrying when you could take it easy and spend time indulging yourself in squandering scholarship money? Being in my final year, the story is quite different now. It is not really the amount of work I have to do, because after living the life of a maltreated cur in the army, hard work doesn’t bother me. It is the stress and frustration of not knowing what to do that drives me up the wall and sometimes through it. It is the feeling of being lost in a forest somewhere in Poland with aid of a needle-less compass. At the end of the day when the frustration gets the better of you, you would turn to the clock in seek of an escape… … the clock reads 6pm, perhaps it is time to take a break – you deserve it. You would then pack up with weary eyes and look forward to….. …. Alas! You realised that you have been rob from the pleasure of going home after work!

I need my office, they better have it by Tuesday. Otherwise we will have one fat cat in the neighbourhood.