He was a big guy, maybe six three, six four. Broad too. He filled the door frame and was very, very angry.
I’m working as an admin assistant in an East Midlands city. It’s yet another job that I neither want nor am interested in: a job in local government.
Oh but it’s a dull world, a world of HR, a world of people I have absolutely nothing in common with. It’s a world of grey. You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps. No. No. No. You don’t have to be fucking dull to work here but it helps. The idea of “making something of myself” never occurred; ambition was for the ambitious. I settled for the average, less than average if I’m honest.
Nine dreary, wasted years in the civil service and now this: admin in local government. Marx never spoke a truer word when he said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
As a child at school I’d been advised, by a particularly disinterested careers advisor, that a nice little office job, was where my future lay. I’d always had a feeling, deep down, that I wasn’t going to be rich, but I hadn’t counted on being poor to be honest. And I’m not talking about the poor of poverty, simply the poor of wondering whether you can afford to go for the meal that friends are going out on, looking for the cheapest option on the menu. The poor that means that when a group of you are heading to the pub door, you hang back, not wanting to buy the first big round. It’s clearly not the end of the world, but then again it’s not something to be proud of either.
There’s a word for this type of work: boondoggle — work or activity that is wasteful or pointless, but gives the appearance of value. I’ve spent a good quarter of my working life boondoggling, the days crawling by, thick and syrupy with languor, suffocated by lassitude. Ironically this constant state of enervation leaves me felling drained and listless.
I work in a converted bus garage in the neglected part of the city. I’m first there every morning, pulling up into the empty car park, manoeuvring my way past the empty vodka bottles and occasional syringe. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the ghetto, but its not a place you’d choose to spend time in.
Two youths are already waiting outside. They’ve been expelled from school and are here to work on a project called Breakaway- disaffected youths repairing and reconditioning old scramble bikes. They’re ok kids, the kind that I’ll occasionally end up teaching years later, when I get a proper job.
I settle at my desk, leafing through what little work I have. The disaffected youths are hanging around, waiting for the youth workers to arrive to start the project. The youth workers are always late, always. The kids come into the office and we chat about football, fast food, that sort of thing. They are bored and want to leave; I convince them to hang on for another half hour. They wander outside.
I start to shuffle timesheets about, putting them in alphabetical order, in date order. Boondoggling.
There’s a loud crash. My office door is flung open, the kids burst in. They’re running round the office, hyped up, agitated, shouting about the geezer across the road threatening them. I tell them to calm down, tell me what’s going on.
Bored with waiting, they’d wandered across the road to the small industrial estate. To amuse themselves they’d started throwing stones at the window of one of the small units. The owner had come out, told them to clear off and they, in turn, had told him to fuck off. I sigh. Why did you do that I ask. They don’t know. Seems we’re all bored with being here, bored with who we are, with what we do. Buddha said that the purpose of life is to have a purpose. Buddha’s not wrong.
There’s another loud crash, this time from the outer office door.
I look up. There’s a tall, heavily built man and he’s filling the open door frame. His right hand is outstretched; he’s moving it very slowly from left to right, back again. There’s a gun in it. He’s pointing it at us, at the desk. At me, because the kids he’s looking for are, by now, hiding under my desk. So. I’m a very badly paid human shield.
One of Raymond Chandler’s tips for spicing up your writing was _ “when in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” I don’t, of course, think this at the time, but he’s right.
“You fucking kids. I’ll fucking shoot you, don’t mess with me.”
He keeps repeating words along these lines, moving the gun slowly, left to right. What am I meant to do? This is way above my pay scale. Strangely, and foolishly, I don’t feel afraid, and on reflection, all these years later, I’ve still no idea why. Clearly I need to do something: what I do is this.
Whilst signalling to the kids under the desk to be quiet, I very very cautiously rise from chair. Walking slowly towards the figure in the door, I feel like I’m dealing with a very dangerous animal which will, if provoked or startled in the slightest, shoot me, possibly shoot all of us. I walk round the desk, all the time looking at the man in the doorway with a gun. It strikes me that it would be a good idea to have a neutral look on my face. So I do.
He’s about eight feet away, still shouting, still waving that gun about. I advance very slowly towards him, both hands out to my sides, palms facing upwards. I walk right up to the man with the gun, making noises of apology: it won’t happen again; I’m sorry; bloody kids.
By this time I’m right next to him and he has his gun arm down by his side. That’s good. I continue my rambling apology and look down. This bit I remember, will always remember, with absolute clarity: he’s got a gun and I’m trying to talk him out of shooting us, whilst looking at that gun.
The gun, or more accurately pistol, has a thick silver handle with ridging, and wooden edging; the barrel is silver too. I can see every small detail. Here’s why. All your senses become tunnelled when you are in situations of extreme stress or danger. For sight, it means your visual attention can be focused on one small geographic area or a tiny detail that’s crucial to the situation and to your survival. In this particular situation: the gun. Your peripheral vision shuts down to focus on the essential: the gun.
So there we both stand, neither of us speaking, me looking at the gun. These few seconds seem to pass very, very slowly. Time too then, has relinquished itself in favour of sight. He seems to have calmed down, he’s muttering now, not waving the gun about, not shouting. He swears a bit more, the fire gone out of him, lets out a heavy sigh like a deflating balloon, turns and walks back across the road.
Very slowly, I close the door, still not wishing to startle him. The kids leap out from under the desk. They are besides themselves with excitement, leaping up and down.
“A Colt 45, geezers got a Colt fucking 45!”
They seem very, very impressed. Not with my selfless act of supererogation, but with the fact that the geezer, the geezer who’d been threatening to shoot them a few seconds earlier, had a Colt 45.
When the case goes to court, some months later, it turns out that they are right.
I make a phone call and twenty minutes later there’s armed police, with bullet proof jackets, holding rifles, outside the building. It’s only then that my hands begin to shake; I feel sick and want to cry.
The case is reported in the local paper. The gun was a replica, the man gets community service. I’m mentioned very briefly: an employee phoned the police.