He was called into the manager’s office.

“Mike, hi. How are you? Good? Did you see the game? Ha! Arsenal couldn’t play their way out of a paper bag! Aside from Leno; without him in goal it would have five-nil! See that save in the second half? Amazing!” This was John Clarke’s approach, he would try and set his reportee at ease before coming to the point. If he was talking to Joan, it would be about Bake Off; if he was talking to the office junior he would ask about which club she’d been to. Mike was a football fan. He supported the local team but watched all the Premier League matches on TV of course. Mike nodded and smiled and agreed and made points about the opposing team.

“Now, Mike. One other thing. I know you are ... political.” Mike was in the English League – a right wing, nationalist party. Essentially they believed in England for the English, with a definition of English definitely meaning ‘white’; but it was equal opportunity nationalist, so they did have as a policy that Poles should be returned to Poland as well as black people should go back to ‘Africa’. Their policy was less clear on identifying countries when it came to non-whites. “We have a new starter next week and, well she’s from Jamaica.” Mike nodded. “Well, you shouldn’t really wear political insignia, Mike.”

Mike looked pointedly at the framed letter with a photograph in his boss’s office, the one from Margaret Thatcher’s office thanking John Clarke for his support during a campaign. “Does that include pictures, John?”

“Oh, well, I mean.” He knew this would be a difficult conversation. Marianne wore a little cross, Jenna always had a headscarf, hell, they’d even tolerated Angus having a massive red rosette on his car during the election. When was a religious symbol a political statement, and when not? Perhaps he should pass this to HR? “Well, perhaps you could just restrict yourself to a small lapel badge?” He’d once suggested he also had a tattoo on his bum and offered to show Joan. She had laughed and smirked and thought she was terrible ‘with it’ to not find the idea offensive. It was a wind-up though, the only had the one tattoo.

“Yeah, ‘course, no problem.” Mike was actually far more reasonable than his appearance suggested. He was large, bald (or shaved head, nobody was quite sure) with ‘The Tarts’ (his football team’s nickname) logo – a pie with steam (people only pointed out it was a pie, not a tart, once) – tattooed on his head. He was large, tall; and large, muscle-bound; and large, maybe a little overweight. At work, his dress was respectable, of course; but his suit always looked a little like he wasn’t used to wearing it, like the people on race days who were all dressed up but still looked a little like a gorilla in a suit. His smile was a cheerful, friendly smile, but people would see it as threatening. That was how people saw him. He was convinced that there were too many people in England, that this could be solved by sending people back where they came from. Like all people in the ‘conviction politics’ camps, pointing out the loss of doctors and nurses from the NHS, and cleaners and agricultural workers back to Eastern Europe, did not fit in to his perception of the problem. If there were fewer ‘foreigners’ there would be less stress on the NHS and so fewer people would be needed to work in it. It was much easier to hold to views if you didn’t consider actual numbers.

Mike left, and John was left disconcerted; both because he was surprised how easy the conversation had gone, and because he wasn’t sure if Mike was going to be all right with the new starter.

Judith arrived on Monday. She was tall, very black, and the word should probably be handsome rather than pretty. Yes, she wasn’t pretty in the feminine, bat-your-eyelids-to-get-men-swooning way. She had a strength about her, but strength in a decidedly female form. If her hips were nearly boyish, her bust was not; the black cotton jacket she wore buttoned simply emphasised her breasts by appearing to be struggling, ever so slightly, with the job. Harriet from HR brought her down, she had been given the introduction (multiferous sheets of paper about data retention, pensions, health and safety, equal opportunities and – the irony! - being a paperless office), now she was delivered to her manager, and Harriet could go off for a well-earned coffee. Almost without exception, the office wondered why the company employed HR people to push pieces of paper around. “Miss Harrison, may I call you Judith? Is that okay? We all use first names here, but since the equal-opportunities training we are encouraged to start more formally as some people prefer that distance. I’m John, John Clarke, with an e. I have to tell you that because there is another John Clark who gets a lot of my emails. Fancy a coffee? Let’s get a couple and then you can meet the team.” They went to the coffee pot, it was always full, he explained the office etiquette of last cup makes a new pot. “Until about three, then there’s enough for the rest of the day as a lot of us move onto tea. Oh, there are teabags in the cupboard. Milk? Sugar? Sweet enough? Sorry, bad joke I get told off for making.”

“He does, makes no difference.” Interjected Matthew. “Matthew Baker, welcome.” Matthew fancied himself, and any female under thirty five; he always came away from any new starter thinking ‘I’m in with a chance there’, even if they had a wedding ring on. He never got anywhere, most of the younger women were spoken for, and too sensible to hook up with someone like him. He was good looking, and he was fit (“Three times to the gym every week. Ran fifteen K last week, didn’t break a sweat. Looking to do the London Marathon, a couple of charities have asked me to. Thinking of doing a triathlon...”), but so full of his own brilliance that his ego didn’t let him find out about other people much.

John smiled and said “How’s the report? I’ll need it tonight, Matthew.”

“No sweat, J-man.” Does anybody say things like J-man? Matthew did, he thought it made him look cool.

“Just for the record, you can call me JC, or John, or even Mr Clarke. But J-man is not one of my favourites. Ah, now this is Mike.” He decided to grasp the nettle, get it over with.

“Hi.” Mike said. He stood up, shook hands and sat down. She noticed the lapel badge, and the tattoo, and made plenty of assumptions to fill in the taciturn gap. They moved on.

“He’s alright, just a bit tied up with the new contract. Ah, Gillian...” and so the office tour went on. Always the same, always a waste of time. These desks didn’t even have name tags to remind you. After name four, the names become a blur.

She’d remember Matthew (Matthew Slime, she had already nicknamed him in her head), and Mike (Bullethead, or moving on from that: Dumdum – large, blunt and dangerous, but also thick as a brick). That was how she remembered, via nicknames she could relate to. Gill was ‘HolyGirl’, and Marianne was ‘HolyGirl2’. Jenna was ‘Headscarf Jenna’. They weren’t particularly clever names, but it meant that within two days she had everybody’s name in her head and could avoid the embarrassing “Terribly sorry, I know we were introduced...”

That first week is always the hardest. Trying to remember names, processes, rules. How to be grateful for being shown the best places to eat; trying to avoid going to the chippy with Fat Alice (her nickname for Alison Thatcher, she wasn’t really fat, just a bit chubby. She’d never nickname someone Fat Alice if she was really fat) everyday. She liked the work, it wasn’t mind-numbingly boring, it was good; the people were mostly friendly, just not that convivial. She wondered about Bullethead; wondered if he was seething within. She’d been abused before “Why don’t you go home, back where you belong, you black bitch.” Someone had shouted at her; for no reason at all. She’d just been walking along the road, minding her own business. She’d ignored it, and went on as if nothing had happened; and later in the toilets she had ruined her make-up by crying her eyes out.

She began to think about looking for another job.

The game that weekend had been a disaster. Sometimes everything goes right and the team play like the well-oiled machine they are paid to be. Other times everything is off; timing perhaps. A pass too far forward so the player can’t reach it or not forward enough so the player has to check to get it and never regains his momentum. A goaly who misjudges where the striker is going to aim for. A referee who fails to spot the deliberate foul from the opposing side, but misinterprets the genuine miss-tackle from your own side. They dropped points that they needed. A lot of spectators left early, but not Mike, he was a loyal supporter who would see it out to the painfully bitter end. As he left, he let out an expletive and punched the brick of the entrance to Stanley Spencer Stand. He barely noticed the pain of his scraped knuckles until he got home.

On the Monday, his red and raw knuckles were obvious. No-one said a word; they had heard about the fight after the match and assumed he was part of the crew who took out the visitors ‘Kill Gang’ as they called themselves. Some of the office thought he might be a hero for defending their turf; most just assumed he was a hooligan and wished he could get arrested so he’d have to leave. Judith walked across to get coffee. “That looks nasty.” She said as she passed his desk.