Mulling around the table like restless cattle before feeding. Not so much a committee as a directive coming on the air. He arrives and hands round sheets of paper hot off the photocopier -eyes periscope over the’agenda. Of course we’re all communists here in the collective, so there’s really no ‘boss’.

A tea bag left in too long has made the tea dark and hard and a bit cool, not the way I like it at all straight from the kettle, 5 or 6 dabs, and get that bag out I say! The water now bitter and disinteresting. People begin to scartch away at the paper as if it were a scab you wish were gone. Pens doodle, circle and underline. Conversation begins to reflect off the  lazy fluro lights. Points of contention, poiints of order, made and resolved , but no chairperson here, just the ‘boss’ He has an arroganmt swagger in his speech and decisions, but we all let him know he’s wrong.

By now the flat metallic taste of impatience has crept into our mouths, we could be doing other things instead of listening to his megaphone democracy. “Let’s wrap it up” he says. Shoulders, held in an attitude of antagonism immediately slump. Battle lines are undrawn, another meeting date set. Angry pens cool, dashed hopes run their flag up the pole for another day. Empty, the room absorbs another round of angst into its cracks….