The unfettered

If you're one of those rare specimens living in a thoroughly soundproofed environment, where you don't hear the birds cawing at 5.23 am, nor are you startled awake by the sudden weeewwawwww-ing screech of alarms emanating from the plethora of 3.06am lightning-moving emergency vehicles, nor is your daily rhythm suckered by the sound of a crunching car flipping across the road before landing on its roof in a smoking piled ruin, nor are you shaken by the sounds of screaming jet engines scorching a path from the sky towards earth and yet another holding pattern; and you don't need a decent pair of soundproofed headphones – which sadly through over-use give you a case of burn-baby-burn – but which still manage to pump out white-noise during the day, and you certainly don't need earplugs to sleep; have neither aspergers, attention deficit disorder, nor dyslexia; then, maybe, just maybe, home working is indeed for you.

But I digress.

Working from home, if you're not living in a bombed-out wilderness where you've been involuntarily reduced to the level of goat tending: squeezing nannies tits before pulling yarn out of your eye – as you only dream of chomping down on your first mouldy dusty slice of something for breakfast, means that you can forgo the boring daily drudgery that goes by the name of office politics: where mavis' talking about her never-ending periods, and clifford's going over the amazing quadruple back-somersaulting 750m line goal over the weekend, from the left-back (no-one wanted), 5 seconds from the final whistle – for the 50th time that hour. The other office dramas. The commute to the office taking an extra two hours, in your own car, as the emergency services have conveniently forgotten to notify anyone, that a major minor connecting the arterial artery has suffered a catastrophic failure due to a lorry aiming for it's main support; as the driver's slumped asleep after not having slept during the past week, courtesy of receiving a caring email from his employer, offering to terminate his service should he be unable to help with the extra 40 deliveries they've so kindly decided to add to his roster, as they just don't have anyone else available to take up the slack.

Failing that, you could commute via the public transportation network and enjoy the morning miasma: the smell emanating from yourself, and the smells wafting from everyone else, combing to create a miasmic soup pricked with last night's drunken regurgitated stew, and the morning's colonic shower-gel, all liberally over-applied and slowly asphyxiating everyone in the carriage, whilst providing a suitable blueprint for the never-ending march of our very own super-bugs.

There is that need, however, to admit that I am been a bit too harsh. Working from home can be one of the most wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable things you can do. Especially if you have a job, or a paying hobby that you actually enjoy, which you can consummate without the need for constant interaction and hand-holding from your previous office, and desk-bound colleagues.

Then, and only then, can you truly say that you are unfettered. Despite been able to count the 50 pacing steps your neighbours take from room to room over the space of half and hour, before they decide that they can take off their steel capped shoes or high heels, and then wait another ten minutes before starting to do it all over again – for another hour; or you might just find yourself wondering just what obscure invisible object needs to be precisely hammered at 11pm at night, three nights in a row, with untrammelled equanimity.

When daesh are on the door-step, putins finger's hovering, half of global food production is wasted, and climate change means my avocados might actually survive outside their watery bath, that talking about such trivialities could be viewed is naval-gazing at it's worst, but with civilisation falling around our ears, we do really need to cling to those things which can allow us a moment of dizzying reflection and recollection!

Before realising that you're still in the office and reaching for a post-it, as your leaking red pen's now ruined another crumpled shirt.