THE SIXTH DESK MOVE

Yep, after just under a year of this one, the Medium-Sized Cheeses (not the Big Cheeses) have decided we're on the move again.

Only this time, it's everyone. For some reason, lost in the notes of a managers' meeting, we've all got to shuffle round like the moving parts of one of those sliding puzzles.

So, that means I'm about to cart my things off to my Seventh Desk here, potentially in the middle of a row at the other end of the office, near Desk#1 and Desk#5 but not exactly in the same spot as either.

"I wonder how many hours they've spent discussing it," I said to Clive. I don't even like to think of the managers sending round Excel spreadsheets and emails, meeting in huddled chats or discussions in meeting rooms. Hours and hours and hours have gone into this cabinet reshuffle: the politics of who goes where, who doesn't want to move, and who's been here long enough to get their way, and then who moves when! And at the end of it, when we're all plugged in again, all we get is the lovely privilege of doing what we were all doing before - in exactly the same the way.

I'm just sitting here, waiting to be told to pack up my plastic pirate, my nanoblocks mini-piano, and my pile of dictionaries.

Seven is the number of perfection. Hopefully, my new desk will come with its own halo and (ideally) a harp. My guess is though that getting there will involve all the chaos of sixty engineers moving desks at once. I'll have earned the harp at least.