Visitor

Someone brought a baby into work yesterday. I can't remember the exact reasons. It was her grandson. Something had just happened to the baby's Dad and the Mum couldn't look after it because she had to be with the Dad, so it fell to the Nan to take care of her... so she had to bring her into work.

As soon as I heard that a baby would be with us, in the office, for half a day, I started wondering how I should behave. Should I pretend I'm not feeling well and go home? Should I call an urgent meeting at another location? Should I snow myself under heaps of paperwork? In the end I to,d myself to stop making a fuss and to act normal.

But my rendition of normal made me turn myself into a complete fool.

The moment the baby arrived, I walked over to him, told his Nan how gorgeous he was, tickled his cheeks, made gurgling noises... and then I took him in my arms (did his Nan look petrified when I asked her if I could do that?) and I paraded him up and down and the office, showing him off to everyone, and they all made polite noises in return, but it was when I'd been doing this for about fifteen minutes - having visited almost every office on our floor - that I detected a change in the looks people were giving me. Slowly, their polite noises become shorter and more strained. They made less eye contact with me. They found they had piles of important paperwork on their desks. And the baby picked up on this and started becoming restless.

He was sobbing when I handed him back to his Nan.

And I pretty much locked myself in my office for the rest of the day and made sure everyone had left the place before I went home.