In praise of recruitment-consultants

Back for some fitful sleep before another call comes from Derek, the mate from the old days when we used to do jobs for a living. Thanks for coming to see the client last week, and particularly for agreeing to be paid only after we got the contract which was always 99.9% in the bag. Well, I'm awfully sorry, and you could have knocked me down with a feather, but they've gone and shut the flaming project down, not that it'd really got past the planning stage, you understand. But thanks anyway. It was good to have someone along with me to show that I'm not just a amateurish one-man band, ha, ha, ha! Bye.

Stagger to the bathroom only to be called back to the phone by Sarah, the Sloaney-accented agency-girl. Could I please hold myself entirely free for high-earning contract-work to start immediately and/or without notice? Wow! Does this mean they've got a client for me? Oh no, but could I please hold myself free for high-earning contract-work to start ... click, brrrrr.

Halfway through breakfast the mail and newspaper arrive. "Your own off-the-shelf company in minutes. You could too be trading with a name like Splargfroth Light Engineering or Llantwit Abbatoir Ltd." "Franchise your way to success. Yes, plastic fruit is the craze that's sweeping the country and you could ride this wave and earn a fortune door-to-door." The job-ads require experience of such extent and length that you conclude that the clients must believe in re-incarnation.

Log on to the net and find yourself the subject of a death-threat thinly disguised as a chain-letter. Send your CV to eight agencies who give their email addresses in their advertisements and then ring you up to ask for it in hardcopy by post.

Off to what we laughingly call work. On the way, relish the new freedom we have enjoyed since we went freelance. Same commuting, same office-rules, same dress-code, same hours, same politics, bullying and threats, only no rights.

Arrive to an empty office. All the permies are in a staff-meeting, from which they emerge laughing and smiling at lunchtime. Aware of one's ephemeral status, get head down and carry on working while the salaried folks make tea, microwave pizzas and swap gossip.

Phone-call comes through on another extension: "It's Geoff from the agency - wants to know if you're free". Red-faced, take the call amid sniggers all round.

Five o'clock arrives and, as the permies leave for home, it's off for a meeting with another client. The consultant gave you the wrong time, place and contact-names, but you manage to get there to find that the client was too busy to read what you gave him last time and hasn't got the brief for the next stage. As you leave, he reminds you menacingly that the project is now running late.

Fish and chips from a newspaper as you walk home from the tube in the rain. Recoil in sodden horror as a BMW, badly driven by a telephoning recruitment consultant, redistributes the contents of a puddle over you and your dinner. "Goodness, " you observe. "There goes Nigel, bless him, working hard to look after my best interests. What would I do without him?"