Yes, Ma'am!

I’ve just realised something rather unnerving. I’ve been sitting at my newly designated work station for two days now, typing away with a nagging feeling that something’s amiss.

Let me set the scene.

The old bedroom is lopsided. The door is in the one corner, adjacent to one wall, the windows are opposite and the wardrobes on the wall to the right, furthest from the door. I’m essentially confined to the corner under the window directly in front of the door. There are some shelves behind me which as the moment mainly contain my stuff, but only because most of Beck’s is still in boxes.

I have to cross her territory to reach my space.

But that’s not the issue. Previously we both faced opposing walls. There was a degree of equality in the arrangement, although she always had more space no indication of superiority.

Now, Beck dominates the room. She has more space than before and significantly more than me, but she also has her desk in the middle of the room.

“It’ll be interesting to reach it from all sides.”

Indeed, but in practice she has only sat around the one side, the side that enables her to look over my shoulder. I’m being watched all the time.

This leaves me with the sensation of her somehow being in charge; an employer-employee relationship. I’m essentially in the place her PA would be, should she have one. Close enough to be shouted at and unable to surf internet sites without being asked exactly what I’m looking at.

Oh, well. At least I get a window. Previously I looked into the recess made by the fireplace. Just white plaster until I put up a poster of the Manhattan skyline.

Hold on, I’ve swapped a panorama of Manhattan for a quiet street in Brockley, admittedly static skyscrapers for the a line of net-curtained nineteen-twenties terraces.