Fall-Out, Preventative Measures and Unforeseen Hazards.

Bloody hell, I don't even get a lie-in this morning. Am hoping the office will have to stay closed all day so I can lounge around relaxing - as far as it is possible to relax while waiting to hear if you're going to die - but instead I get a call about 9:30am saying I can re-open the office, oh joy. The results are back from Porton Down, and it turns out the powder wasn't harmful to breathe in - though it was potentially explosive. At least we don't have to keep taking the tablets now.

Then Fiona phones to say she's changed her mind about working here since hearing about what happened yesterday, so that's another intern we've managed to lose within their first week. Can't say I blame her for being nervous as, when I see today's mail sitting on my desk, I don't actually want to open it. I consider sticking it all in one of the big grey plastic HOC* envelopes and sending it to the girls in the Westminster office, so that, by the time they send it back to me, it'll at least have passed through the scanners at the House of Commons. But then I realise that this will slow down our turnaround time, and The Boss won't tolerate that. Not for the first time, I wish death and destruction on both him and TheyWorkForYou.com.

So there is nothing for it but to open the bloody post myself. I hold each envelope out in front of me as if it was a bomb, then poke a letter opener into one corner before turning my back and ripping the blade through the top of each one. This achieves the dubious benefit of making me feel better while I'm doing it, but the results then irritate the hell out of me, because I seem to have cut through the top third of every letter in the process. I have to get Greg to stick all of them back together before we can even start to reply to them.

Greg says that he is so traumatised by having had to expose his body to a "bunch of gym-toned civil servants in a public place" that we are going out tonight to get drunk, in order to obliterate the memory. This seems like a good idea. At the time. When will I ever learn?


*HOC - House of Commons, as usual

Not Exactly A Good Start To The Week

Today I have to strip naked in a multi-storey car park. Then I am hosed down by some guy wearing head to toe plastic. For God's sake, this is all getting too much. It all starts before the new intern has even arrived for her first day on the job.

I am opening an envelope when white powder starts flying everywhere. Greg and I just sit and look at each other for what seems like five minutes, then he yells, "Start panicking!" and runs around pointlessly for a bit, while I try to work out who we should call for help. First a police officer turns up, and then the decontamination unit arrives, along with three fire engines and two ambulances. They evacuate everyone, including all those who work in the neighbouring offices. We're going to be even more popular with them than we already were after the Mr Humphries debacle, thanks to this.

All the officials are wearing full decontamination suits and breathing apparatus, and they set up some sort of bouncy castle-type decontamination thing in the car park. Greg and I (as well as the hapless police officer) are ordered to strip and change into white suits like those in CSI. So not a good look. Then we're scrubbed down with Fairy liquid, which does nothing for my new haircut, before being taken to the hospital for check-ups.

After we've seen the doctors, we're discharged, having been prescribed medication to take in case the powder was anthrax. Even the journey home is embarrassing as God knows when we'll get our clothes back. I'm particularly cross that I was wearing my favourite pair of shoes at the time. I have to go home in a plastic suit and a pair of fireman's trainers, which must be a size nine at least.

Meanwhile the office is to stay closed until the exact nature of the powder is established, and the Police are posting officers there overnight. Bloody marvellous. The usual suspects are going to be leaving so many abusive messages about us not answering their calls that the answer-phone will probably explode.

So now we just have to wait for Porton Down to tell us whether and when we're going to die horrible deaths. Max is furious. He phones The Boss in Westminster, and shouts at him about how he is failing to protect his staff. Andrew goes on about being a "man of the people" and "accessibility" and eventually, Max gets so cross that he has to do my trick of pretending that they've been cut off, as otherwise he says he might have resigned on my behalf, and then where would we be? (Max is not at all himself since his company started talking about redundancies.)

I am too discomfited to do anything for the rest of the day, except sit at home and stew about why The Boss won't let us have all our constituency mail sent to the House of Commons in the first instance, like so many other MPs do. At least then the bloody letters would be put through their scanners before I am expected to open the damned things. The Boss leads such a charmed life - this sort of thing never seems to occur when he's here. If it did, maybe he'd learn his lesson, instead of always claiming that we exaggerate what happens, or blaming us for somehow causing the events.

I'm almost as upset that Andrew has escaped again, as I am by the public humiliation, though that was awful - I didn't even have my new underwear on, as I've been saving it just in case I ever do go on a date with Johnny. Mind you, I wasn't as embarrassed as Greg, who kept muttering, "Bit of weight left over from Christmas. Just joined a gym," for the benefit of the onlookers. I suppose now I'd better check whether my life assurance covers me for acts of terrorism, especially if Max is going to lose his job.