When you first started in local government (and, I suspect, any other similar job), you were the lowest form of life, namely the office junior. You did everyone else’s filing, had to go to the public counter when someone buzzed, answer the telephones and nip out to buy fags for a superior. However, all this administrative drudgery paled into insignificance when compared to the brilliantly conceived but frighteningly simple Refreshment Break Scam. The former junior (promoted to Plan Folding once you had arrived) would instruct you in the finer points of this lucrative process which would supplement your salary of £385 per annum. Oi! I don’t look that old!

It is probably best explained with an actual worked example and, as I recall the details for the purpose of this account, it has just struck me that, of the 16 employees in this particular office, none were female (well, not during normal working hours anyway) – a fact that has never occurred to me before. But that is not part of my tale.

You took orders for tea, coffee, plain buttered rolls and cheese rolls in the morning and only tea in the afternoon, then took a tray with teapot/coffeepot to the canteen across the back yard of the building where your orders were filled by Alice, the cook, who always had a cigarette hanging from her mouth, the ash always at the point where it was about to drop (and frequently did into whatever she was cooking, presumably). I don’t know who was worse, Alice or her successor, Betty. After Alice left, you always knew if suet pudding was going to be on the lunch menu when Betty wore only one elastic stocking. Well, I believed it at the time – I was only a young lad, after all. But I digress.

Suppose you had taken orders for 10 teas, 6 coffees, 5 buttered rolls and 8 cheese rolls. You would actually order 7 teas, 4 coffees (measuring quantities was by no means an exact science), 8 buttered rolls and 5 cheese rolls. On the way back from the canteen, you would redistribute the cheese from the cheese rolls to populate the 3 buttered rolls needed to make up the number of cheese rolls ordered. When you returned, you always had enough tea and coffee to fulfil the number ordered in the office and the right mix of plain and cheese rolls. Thus, you made a tidy profit and the poor fools suspected nothing!

I suppose I ought to have kept quiet about this – or does cheese fall within the statute of limitations?