The scene – a dusty office in the grandly titled Health
& Environment Dept in your local town hall. Walter (49) is an Environmental
Health Officer, or EHO. Priscilla (17) is on work experience.
Priscilla
Please, Sir, could you find me something to do? I’m dead bored.
Walter “Do?”
What d’you mean, “do”? You’ve been making the tea. What more do you
want?
Priscilla Well,
it’s just that I haven’t learnt anything here, yet. And I’ll be expected to...
Walter You are on Work Experience,
young lady. You are not expected to learn anything, but to Experience Work.
Priscilla But I haven’t seen any work going on,
and I’ll have been here for three months next Tuesday. I mean, aren’t you
supposed to be going out and inspecting things? Like premises? I quite fancy
inspecting premises. It sounds really, like, cool. I’d like to close something
down. That would be a real work experience, closing something down. Like for
example Premises. If they, were, you know, a bit dodgy, with people snuffing it
all over the place from E-coli thingies, you know.
Walter First thing, young lady: put
that kettle on again. And we don’t have time to go around inspecting premises.
Good heavens, do you know how many Premises there are? Probably hundreds.
Inspect one and we’d have to inspect all of them, and then where would we be?
Masses of paperwork, and most of the time it would be raining. And talking of paperwork, have you finished
the filing? I know the system’s hard to understand, but that’s the whole point.
It’s hard work finding anything in the files. It can take days. I go home
sometimes and I say to the wife, I say, Hilda, that’s the wife, I say to her,
we found that file I was telling you about on Sunday, and she’s as thrilled as
I am, bless her.
Priscilla I think I will put the kettle on.
Excuse me.
Walter Where’s the wretched girl’s file?
Heavens, it’s on my desk. That will never do. Still, might as well have a
shufti for a refresh. [he reads the file. Stasis, apart from occasional expressions
of disbelief, such as ‘bloomin’ Ada’ . Then he reads aloud]
Baccalaureate,
Sorbonne. Huh, bloody foreigners. Tripos, Cambridge, at 13. Load of tripe, more
like. [pause, as he skims through several pages of CV]. What’s this?
Summer job at Pizza Parlour? That’s better. Much, much better.
Priscilla (enters, with tea tray.) I’ve
brought you some ginger biccies. They were in the EHO tin in the kitchen.
They’re a bit soft, but I’ve rubbed the green furry bits off. Shall I pour?
Walter Ah! Tea and biccies! Pour away,
girl. Excellent!
Now then. I’m at
conference this afternoon with the mayor. You can’t reach me because the Golf
Club don’t allow mobile phones on the links. But when you’ve done the
washing-up and the filing you might have a look at this. It’s a bit old, but
there might be some juice in it yet. It’s Euro directive 1935/2004...
Anyway, must rush. Lock up when
you go, won’t you?
Priscilla goes off to the
kitchen for a moment, but returns immediately.
Priscilla
(to audience)
I was really sorry for ‘im,
snuffing it like that on the eighteenth. Food poisoning, apparently. Odd, ‘cos
he was so busy being busy that he’d only had a ginger biccy all day.
Now then. I’d better
experience some work. So what’s this? European regulation 1935/2004...
[she sits in Walter’s
chair, puts on his reading glasses and begins to make copious notes.]
Envoi:
Thank heaven for the Wallies and the Prissies who rule our lives with such
wisdom from their desks in the town hall
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