The back door at work's out to get me.

Apart from this flaw, the office is pretty good. It's the third office we've been in in the two years I've been working for the company. They've been steadily improving. The first office had two desks and about two and two-halves people working there, and occasional people coming up to have their lunch, and no room for anything. The second office had three and a half workstations, and a fair amount of shelf space that we still, somehow, managed to fill entirely. Publishing, man. Just kill a tree now.

But this office has space. Room for five desks, and a separate space with a board-table thing where we can have meetings and stick the boss when he comes in to annoy us. Room in the corner for the fridge and kettle and Dave's toastie sandwich maker. It even has an interesting anomaly in the horizontal plane of its floor, right beneath and to the right of my wheelie chair, which makes it briefly and flounderingly exciting when I forget about it and lean back in my chair.

When it comes to doors, though, this office is challenged. The entrance to the bookshop, the boss has repeatedly promised us, will one day have a door. A real one, that locks. In the meantime, it has the base of a bookshelf gondola, turned on its side and functioning as a roadblock. We have to lever our way past it to get it, which can get quite challenging when you're carrying three flat whites.

The other option is the back door. The back door is a real door. It locks. It has a handle. The handle is metal. And every time - every single time - that I reach for it, it zaps me.

The vehemence changes. Some days it's a barely noticable pht. The other day I actually saw a blue spark arc across.

Clearly it's only a matter of time before it gets it right, and I shortcircuit the world.

When it happens, Amy? You can have my climbing shoes. And my kidneys, if need be.