YELLOW JACKET

"Looks good on you, Matt," smirked Jamie as we trooped back inside.

"So not funny," I replied, shuffling in my luminous fire marshal jacket. The entire company was making its way into the building after a fire alarm test.

"Actually, you don't fancy being a fire m..."

"Nope. You're too good at it," said he, quickly.

Being a fire marshal means pausing that moment longer while you realise the fire alarm is actually going off and it isn't the weekly test on a Tuesday morning. While everyone else grabs a bag or slips into a coat, your job is to sigh at the ceiling, pull out your yellow vest from your drawer and then slide your arms into it.

Then, you have to check the area of the office you've been assigned to (in my case, the server room, a meeting room and the big boss's office) just in case anyone is cowering under a desk or canoodling between the racks.

By this time, the alarm is pounding inside your head and everyone has already left.

I gave a thumbs up to Peter (whose turn it was to check the toilets this time) and then I trudged through the empty office and out into the sunshine.

'Leadership is lonely after all then,' I whispered to myself on the way out. And then some. Even in a fake crisis, he what wears the yellow jacket endeth up in an empty office.

"Some people used the revolving door," said the fire chief during the debrief afterwards. "And there were quite a few, clutching bags." Bristling eyebrows.

He was as stern as fire chiefs always are. I can't think Fireman Sam was ever this serious, was he? And that Elvis would have been a nightmare colleague, not to mention Norman setting fire to everything that moves in Pontypandy on a weekly basis.

I got back to my desk.

"Well someone needs to stand in front of the door to stop people using it! Because they will!" said someone grumpily later when I'd relayed the feedback. "A fire marshal probably. Matt, you can feed that back can't you?"

Yep. Lonely business. Criticised by the fire chief, criticised by the people we're saving by volunteering to check the rooms of a building that could be an inferno, and criticised by the same people again for not doing it properly. It struck me as an excellent picture.

"Are you absolutely sure?" I asked Jamie while I stuffed the yellow jacket back in my drawer. He smiled. He was.