DULCE ET DECORUM EST

When I got to work yesterday, reception smelled like the zoo - and I don't mean the gift shop. It was the pervading aroma of excretion and effluence, floating up through the drains like a noxious gas cloud.

It was everywhere: in the corridor, round the desks, through the meeting rooms and in the office, hanging in the air unpleasantly. I sat down and switched on my computer. "Morning all," I said to the room, while twitching my nose.

Then, in accordance with the rest of The Routine, I headed for the kitchen, swinging my empty mug on an index finger as I went.

I have never known anything like it. My eyes burned, I felt like retching and my head started spinning with dizzy hallucination. It was putrid - like rotting eggs, raw sewage mixed up with the stench of death in the pipes, swirling up through the plughole and choking every last molecule of oxygen from the room. I backed out, thinking of Wilfred Owen in Dulce Et Decorum Est, wondering if drawing a comparison would be disrespectful. Well, anyway, the smell was vile, I mean it was properly disgusting.

I got back to my desk.

"The sink in the main kitchen is currently out of order," said the first email I opened. You can say that again. Bang out of order.