Wrapped in gold

After I was sent a-packing from my job as a Saver under false accusations of computer sabotage (and because the Chief Saver didn't fancy me), it wasn't long before I scored my second job in London, cutting out cardboard animals for one of the cities most prestigious law firms.

More prosaic than the job title "Saver", my new title was "Paralegal". My actual role was to cut sheets of black cardboard into appropriate sized pieces and tape them over the relevant sections of documents as indicated by the Legals. Meeting minutes, memorandums etc - those nuggets of evidence that weren't admissible in court - were to be concealed from the prying eyes of the other parties to the case. Sometimes I'd leave a saucy little gap in my taping to try and tempt them into a peek.

It was better than the stiff-backed world of the Savers. I lounged in a luxurious sixth floor office with regular visits from a tea lady bearing plates of gold-wrapped chocolate biscuits. I shared my world with another ex-colonial law graduate, a New Zealander also suffering working visa restrictions at the hands of the Mother Country. We passed the days overeating and making crooked giraffes and curly tailed pigs out of black carboard and gold paper, heating up the room with our unused brain activity.

At lunchtime I hobnobbed in sandwich bars with dry-cleaned souls carrying bristling briefcases. Several times I came across fellow law graduates from my university in Sydney who had hit the big time working as solicitors in London's top firms. These were law graduates who had studied law in the appropriate manner. Unlike me, they hadn't decided after two weeks that this degree wasn't for them, yet still hung about because they were programmed to finish what they start, from sandwiches to law degrees.

They would ask me politely where I was at?, and i'd say the name of the law firm - not mentioning my job title, or how many giraffes i'd created that morning - and their eyes would say "wow", and their lips: "well done", while their hands patted me on the head. I knew they were thinking, how in the hooligans did this wayward creature who never came to class get to be working in one of the biggies? And i'd just stick around and finish my sandwich.