I’m making a to do list of tasks that are neither urgent or important. That should take ten, fifteen minutes max. I’ll make tea, that’s another five minutes.

The tea actually took ten minutes, I bumped into Gail from marketing and she spotted my non-sale-pre-payday new shoes. She was the real reason for the back to back tea runs Lorraine’s benefited from. Gail’s the office shoe queen, really sweet, incredibly dull but ridiculously great taste in shoes.

“Tight?”  Lorraine asks spotting me wriggling my toes.

“Not for the price I paid for them Loz, fit like a glove.” She flashes a quick insincere smile.

Selecting the last bourbon from the biscuit tin she swipes the newspaper from my in-tray.

“Coffee ok?”  I ask and she nods, licking a finger to turn a page. Lorraine has her coffee decaf with red milk, I make it caffeinated with blue milk, if she’s scoffing chocolate biscuits what’s the point of red milk?

She launches into her usual diatribe, dissecting the diets and dresses in the Daily Mail. Outside, I notice fresh graffiti on the wall, “no regrets” it reads. The colour’s almost the same shade of blue as my new shoes, which to the untrained eye, (Lorraine’s) look navy but they’re actually Prussian blue.

Our fat boss waddles in, grunting something that sounds like tea, it’s Wednesday, Lorraine’s day. Nursing my coffee mug I squint at the graffiti, everyone has regrets, I regret having a meatball sub last night, I’d run out of spaghetti. I regret forgetting to bring one in for lunch, I’m skint.

It’s 10am, three hours until lunch. I regret selling my pride to the highest bidder (HR) when redundancy came knocking. Flexing my toes in the shoes, I’ll be honest, they do pinch, a little.