office

I arrive home at twenty to one this morning after the trip from Hopetoun, sleep from two till five, then rise to watch The Arsenal. I switch on the box to find the game already in its seventh minute, no goals scored. In the next two minutes while I’m blinking moon-dust off my pupils, Wigan score twice and go on to win by those two goals to Arsenal’s one.

From seven till eight I hustle about the house, packing bags for my first morning in our new Collingwood office. The train from Croydon is six minutes late into Parliament. It’s a long escalator from Platforms 3 and 4 to Platforms 1 and 2. I watch my Epping train slide away down the tunnel. The next train is six minutes late.

The walk from Collingwood station along Gipps Street to the office takes ten minutes, if I catch the Hoddle Street lights. All the length of the street women’s fashion wholesale outlets are scattered among car garages, and small obscure businesses in refurbished factories and tanneries. Narrow lanes with cobbled gutters lead off Gipps Street; the odd narrow house hunkers between walls scrawled with graffiti.

The MM and KM office is in Carringbush House, a three-level retail and office development. The ground floor houses swish one-off retail outlets—no chains here—and a coffee shop frequented by the office workers from the two levels above. It’s open, bright and airy. Our office is at the rear on the third level.

The five new KM staff are in, making seven of them, and two of us, Sasha and me. A sheet of A4 paper with MM2 in huge print is tacked to the wall above my new desk, a cubicle, but spacious enough. A new ergonomic swivel chair camps under the desk and a new monitor is on top. I unpack the bags of MM materials I’ve cleared off my dining-room table and brought to work.

What will be the meeting room is full of boxes from Collins Street. Black plastic crates with orange lids line the walls, stacked three high. Cartons of trinkets—wristbands, coffee mugs, pens, key-rings and show bags—spill their booty on the floor. The KM program is flavour of the month and has dollars for giveaways.

Boxes fill the other two rooms of our suite. The only empty room is the storeroom, waiting for a photocopier, server, shelves and cupboards. The kitchen cupboards are full of white Ikea crockery, the drawers armed with shiny unblemished cutlery and crisp waffle-print tea-towels.

Cathy arrives from Adelaide with toys for Sasha me, a laptop and a mobile phone. Finally after four weeks I feel like I’m not just employed but that I’m connected and I belong somewhere.

Rock on.