But just when I think it is safe to go back in the water (aka make a more lasting return to our Dear Little Department, as opposed to the sanctuary of my off-site office), I feel a sharp nipping at my toes...
I'm sitting placidly entering data on my screen when a series of ominous harbingers - screeching from the corridor, noisy entry into the main office, bird of night hooting by day, lioness whelping in the street, that kind of thing - heralds the arrival of Remora (ah! Remora. Thereby hangs a tale etc etc).
She has the choice of four available hotdesks including the one directly beside Ex-Army Man, one opposite her bosom buddy Spiteful Manager, and one a little way behind me.
Does she sit at any of these?
No, she does not.
Remora elects to sit at the hotdesk directly opposite and adjoining my own. It is therefore impossible for me to raise my eyes and not get a full-frontal headshot filling my line of vision.
Really, it is almost more than the human spirit can bear - and is certainly more than I can cope with at the present time.
I experience one of my periods of head-swimming paralysis, when a great wave of anxiety, conflict and distress sweeps through my brain like a horrible tsunami washing all rational thought and logic before it, and leaving a jumbled mass of broken debris in its wake.
No-one is aware of this, of course. I have dropped my gaze to the document on my desk and stare at it unseeingly for long minutes, while Remora launches into her usual staged performance designed to let everyone in the room know how extremely clever and popular people think she is; augmented by ostentatious telephone calls to senior colleagues and external partners (we know who she is speaking to, because she repeats their names loudly and often).
It is while she is preoccupied with one of these that a very simple but life-saving idea pops into my head. I discreetly empty out a handy box file, shoving its contents under my desk with a slightly agitated foot so I can deal with it later. Then when Remora's back is temporarily turned, I lift my screen up onto the box file, achieving a subtle but transformative rearrangement of my work station.
Now, when I raise my head, I cannot see Remora at all, and what is even more important - she cannot see me. I feel instant relief, intensified when I take my iPod out of my handbag and don the headphones. By the time she sits back down at the hotdesk, she has been rendered both invisible and inaudible. And this is the only way I can cope with sharing my workspace with the Ringleader Bully, who has somehow managed to get a number of my hitherto amiable colleagues dancing to her tune....
Quite by chance I have selected "Les Miserables" from my playlist, but as the musical unfolds it seems to be strangely apposite. Indeed, when the chorus starts singing "Look down, look down, don't look them in the eye; look down, look down, you're here until you die" I very nearly break into loud song along with them.
By the time Jean Valjean has escaped from Javert's clutches and taken Cosette safely into his keeping, I am starting to feel calm and focused again, and have managed to so totally reconnect with my work that it is only at the start of "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables" that I look up and realise that's exactly what lies beyond my screen.
An empty chair at an empty table.
The Parisian barricades were not enough to protect a lot of brave people, but my makeshift little barricade does appear to have saved me today. Thank you box file. And thank you Victor Hugo, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg, and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“Do you hear the people sing,
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again.
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes......"
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