You know . . . work to live and not live to work . . .
Find the right balance . . . that kind of thing.
But here I am being offered a new job that will see an end to being able to stick to that philosophy.
It appears that I have been far too clever by bloody half . . .
In my desire to keep my job, I have inadvertently made a rod for my own back.
Nolan Reece here thinks I’m his go-to girl for all things environmental, when the truth is I’ve been making it all up just to save my own hide! I’m not his go-to girl, even though I’d really like to be. I’m not really environmentally conscious in the slightest. I still drive that big polluting Mercedes. I still buy my clothes in Primark. I still use single-use plastic bottles, and I still once happily dated a man who would think nothing of levelling an entire deciduous forest to put up blocks of luxury flats.
I’ve been lying through my teeth, and done such a convincing job of it that it’s got me a promotion I really don’t deserve at all!
I have been hoisted by my own petard . . . whatever that actually means.
But I can’t say no, can I? Not now. Not after all of this. It might expose my true colours!
I’ve backed myself into a corner so expertly that you could give me a job as a forklift driver.
Bloody hellfire.
‘Yes, Nolan. Of course I accept!’ I say, trying to sound as enthusiastic as he wants me to.
If anything, my grip on the arms of the chair has got even firmer.
‘Excellent!’ Nolan replies, actually bouncing up and down on his seat. ‘I’m so pleased!’
Yeah? I’m not so sure everyone else will be!
All they’re going to see is Little Miss Pot Plant brown-nosing her way into a cushy promotion. Thank God none of them saw me in here with my pants out and my trousers down. Tongues would wag harder than an excited dog’s tail.
But that’s it, isn’t it?
I’m committed now. I’ve said yes to what amounts to a massive change of lifestyle, and I’m sorry to say that it terrifies me. Not least because my promotion is built on a tissue of lies that I cooked up just to avoid demotion to the ranks of the unemployed!
As Nolan starts to fill me in on what he’s going to expect from me as his number two at Viridian PR, I can’t help but feel a certain amount of internal whiplash.
I’ve gone from being scared to death about having to find a new job, to being even more scared to death at the prospect of staying in this one – all in the space of a few seconds.
What on earth am I going to do now?
. . . apart from water the bloody pot plants again this afternoon, I mean. I doubt being Nolan’s second-in-command is going to stop me from having to do that.
Curse me and my Machiavellian levels of stupidity!
Chapter Four
VEGANTHROPY FOR BEGINNERS
There goes a joke:
How do you know if someone’s a vegan?
Don’t worry, they’ll fucking tell you.
It’s not a joke I’ve ever had much truck with, to be frank. The intimation is that vegans are all self-righteous, pompous idiots, who can’t wait to pontificate at you about their healthy, animal-friendly lifestyles, while at the same time berating you for being a disgusting corpse-eater.
That’s an image that is prevalent in the media, and across society in general. It has not, up until now, been my personal experience of them, though.
Of the vegans I have met in my life, I have found most, if not all, of them to be perfectly ordinary human beings, who just happen not to eat or wear animal products.
This is by and large how most people actually are – just getting on with their lives, having made choices for themselves that they have no huge desire to foist on to others.
Of course, there are a small minority of vegans who aren’t as sensible as that – and do make it their job in life to annoy as many other people as possible, by lecturing them about the evils of eating animal products. But they are very few and far between, and are very much the exception, not the rule.
This, of course, holds true for most facets of our day-to-day lives: most people are decent, sensible and pragmatic – it’s a small minority that are