Wage Monkey - Part The Last

When I arrived at the Oval, the usual selection of current, former and future criminals were there to make up my friendly, neighbourhood co-workers. This bit wasn't much of a surprise, though, and I wasn't expecting a day of witty repartee and general jocularity so I can't really complain about that.

We were assigned our areas to watch and sent on our merry way. Our mission - to just sort of stand there and either stop people going were they weren't supposed to or point them in the direction they needed to go. I was given a section of the stands to watch over and told to go forth and watch.

It was pretty much at this point, when I'd got myself in my allocated standing position, that the worst thing possible for a cricket match happened - it started to rain. For those of you not in the know, cricket is one of those sports which is prevented by rain (don't worry, I won't be blinding you with cricket facts, sport and I are very much uneasy bedfellows). Splendid , I thought, rain stops play, we all go home and I get my flat fee of £30 for doing nothing. Oh ho ho, thought the universe, you not getting off that lightly, Sunny Jim.

You see if the rain is heavy enough to stop play but not heavy enough to give the ground a thorough soaking then everyone will just hang around on the off chance that it could all kick off. And lo and behold, it rained consistently but not too heavily throughout the day whilst showing occasional signs of clearing up without actually doing so and so the Powers That Be decided to hang around all day on the off chance that it could kick off. The upshot of this being that I had to stand outside all day. In the rain. Staring at empty stands. And empty grass. In case there was cricket. Which I find boring anyway.

It was the soggiest and most miserable of working days during my career asa a temp. The day dragged on interminably with no stimulation for my bored little brain and no respite from the glorious summer weather. They made us work the whole day and, by the end, I was cold, damp and downcast. This was the final nail in the coffin of my glittering career as a temp steward. Some of my fellow knuckle-draggers seemed to enjoy getting paid for standing around all day doing nothing but get rained on but the mind-popping tedium of it all wasn't for me. I handed in my high visibility jerkin and bade farewell to the stewarding world.

Little did I know that the future would hold such glittering temp roles as call centre operative, airport security and cinema receipt sorter....