In which Tony pauses to reflect and concludes that work is a needless distraction.

The nocturnal Sir Fred had insisted I stick to the hours of between midnight and 6am to revise his corporate literature. These were my normal working hours so it was no particular hardship. Less palatable was band manager George Lyttleton’s insistence on a 9am start for his ‘Mock Lobster’ CD artwork. Diminutive and lime-suited, I could always guarantee Lyttleton’s presence at the precise hour on account of the alcoholic red-card he’d been served some years back. Denial of alcohol often begets punctuality.

As both these characters were thoroughly disreputable, I had a healthy suspicion regarding any dealings with them. However, the combined hours of graft left little time to discern what conniving lay behind these particular projects or how they might find a way to screw me on the price.

It struck me that this reached the very core of the problem with work – it consumes your time and energy to the extent that you have no idea what’s going on in your life and care even less. Forty years go by in this way if you're lucky enough to hold down a job so long. Then you wake up a withered old prune and ask ‘did something happen?’ By this time you’re drooling on your shirt and struggling to remember your name, let alone a lifetime of events.

I figured at the very least I would have a journal to remind me of such details in my dotage. I resolved to stop writing such drivel in it.