Having an Affair...

It's not easy letting go.

The day after renouncing Hair, I have to go to the Town Hall. Which triggers all the usual rituals, including careful creation of a non-mad hairstyle (grooming is a fabulous way to deflect suspicions that one is going a bit la la).

Today I sport a newly highlighted mane (good God, how can a few strips of bleach cost so much???) which has been gelled into something interestingly bouffant. We are in the middle of painting the bedroom, so I have been unable to get into my wardrobe, and have only found something to wear by sliding my hand through the available three inch crack and feeling my way along my frock collection. This braille-like system for trying to identify each one hasn't proved particularly reliable, yet I manage to pull out something good enough to keep the Witches quiet.

But the primary purpose of my Town Hall visit today is lunch with Private Colleague! And really - I could be wearing my dressing gown for all either of us care.

We meet in a restaurant which no-one else is likely to walk into, knowing we need to keep our meeting highly discreet. In fact our behaviour is akin to co-workers sneaking off for an illicit dalliance. Private Colleague, you see, works in a team headed up by Spiteful Manager, and she freely admits to me that he is prone to interrogate his staff on where they have been and what they have been talking to certain people about (particularly when it is me !!).

So for the time being, we have decided to go to ground.

I have always liked and respected Private Colleague. After the chat we have recently been enjoying via our personal email addresses, we are feeling close; so the lunch which is meant to last for one hour effortlessly extends into two. She tells me all about the recent incident when Line Manager (mine not hers) started shouting at her in the middle of the office. I sit there feeling amazed that Line Manager should - unbelievably - repeat the actions which saw him hauled into a Disciplinary Hearing at the start of the year, while the words of Gorgeous GP reverberate through my mind ("the people you work for seem to be incredibly stupid"....)

Private Colleague also tells me that New Boss has now delivered a formal edict that no-one is to talk to him about work matters ! All queries and issues have to be taken to his two generals aka Deputy Boss and Line Manager. Which is fine as a theory of leadership and management - except that, much as I adore Deputy Boss, he can't lead; and Line Manager most certainly can't manage....

I am wondering how all this squares with New Boss's repeated exhortations that he wants us all to be a family! His family is horribly dysfunctional, lacking in loyalty, support or compassion. It's one I just want to run away from. (In fact I keep feeling an overwhelming impulse to burst through the doors of the Policy Unit, or Planning, or Administration screaming "adopt me! One of you, please please adopt me!!!")

Private Colleague and I discuss at length why we don't simply go and find another job. Because of course we stay where we are because we have reasons. The reasons have bugger all to do with work satisfaction or loyalty to the organisation, and far much more to do with the fact that: we both have outside commitments, we don't want or need further disruption, there are worse jobs out there, and frankly there might not be any jobs out there (and, in my case, the fact that I can walk to work and don't have to get on a tube train).

So we conclude that staying suits us overall, as long as we can keep our heads down, and avoid all the shrapnel and flak...

At about 3pm, Private Colleague and I decide that we had better meander back to our current family unit, which we approach warily and then separate ten yards from the Town Hall entrance so that we can walk into the department through separate doors.....

Afterwards, we exchange emails saying how helpful we both found it, and how good it felt to reconnect. And that we must do it again very soon.