You could hear a PIN drop ...

In the hazy days of my youth I used to work for Her Majesty's Civil Service. I was more of a potato than a mandarin. My corridors were more well-worn lino and paint than hushed marble. If a buck had been dropped from a Permanent Secretary there would be a significant wait while it fell at terminal velocity, bounced off a few filing cabinets and then stopped with me (nowhere lower for it to fall). We had no room at my "the sharp end" for club chairs and the ties of old schools that bind like Japanese Knotweed. Fresh-faced and innocent, I began my service to The Queen in the trenches of the benefits office with the largest single local staff in the land, the three hundred and fifty odd lost souls of Crown House in Grimsby.

I wrote GiroCheques. I sat at a machine the size of a small dining table and typed names and amounts and I typed them so fast that the memory buffer would fill, the "golfball" print head would fly off like a demented missile and I learned to casually catch it mid-air and slam it back onto the gubbins before the machine even missed it. I was the giro writer of choice for rush jobs and crisis situations.

I mopped vomit when our customers had nasty reactions to their (non-prescription) drugs or the cider simply became too much for them (and when the only alternative would have been to leave it for the nice cleaning ladies instead, which would not have been terribly gallant). I visited wonderful people in foul hospices and I visited foul people with wonderful and colourful stories.

Having been identified early on as willing, able and gullible I covered absences and filled gaps on a whim.

I ordered oil, rode in oil tankers to our various outstations. I arranged office repairs. I chased intruders, rescued folk from broken lifts and on one delightful day had to stand on the roof of our seven-storey building talking to a suicidal gentleman while he walked up and down the parapet and we waited for the Police to arrive. I consoled security guards who had found fake bombs (remember bomb scares?) made from candles, alarm clocks, wire and biscuit tins. I put secretaries through disciplinary procedures when their real bosses didn't want to and so went off sick or all mysterious like and I represented H.M. DSS at tribunals and witch-hunts and appeals.

I did counter duty. How many pairs of knickers did madam's incontinence cause madam to get through in a week or did madam have any clues as to the identity of the father or fathers of any of her chidren? Payments issued by hand at 1100HRS and 1500HRS were fun, especially with those who had no payment coming but had queued anyway for the argument. One gentleman in particular used to arrive for a daily payment, always half an hour early, barge to the counter tugging his earlobes and patting his head, forget to breathe, pass out, disappear under the counter and then bound up again as large as life to repeat the process. Others used to bring their entire families as though it were a trip out such as a picnic.

I did visits, filling in for absent Inspectors and Fraud Staff - handed a pile of files and told to fly, my pretty monkeys, fly like the wind. Unaccompanied visits to some very dubious addresses. On one occasion I parked my nice (personal, private) car on one of our favourite estates in winter twilight only to have two dozen spade & gatepost wielding residents start to gather around me (I left at high speed, marked the file as "No reply to repeated knocking"). I genuinely, really, absolutely for real hand on heart truthfully was sent out one day because an Inspector rang in sick, doing his "sick visits" checking that claimants were still ill - only to knock on the door to be greeted by relatives dressed for the funeral (and yes, the hearse and cars arrived at the house just after I did and I had parked acoss the driveway)...

One particular visit was a review of circumstances in a block of flats within walking distance of the office, Bevan House - and the manager decided to come with me to watch as a "test check". After gaining extrance to the flat I noticed there were quite a few blokes waiting in the lounge and my boss started to giggle (I was too young to know how to giggle). I interviewed madam with me sat on the end of her bed, she in her flimsy working clothes (for I believe that she entertained lonely gentlemen) and both of us studiously following the law and ignoring the obvious fortune she was raking in - can't take account of "immoral earnings" of course. I remember that the boss did not return to the office with me immediately but found cause for delay, somewhere.

I lost count of the number of pensioners I visited who wanted nothing more than a small replacement television - that being the only thing in the whole world that still talked to them. What was top of the list of things we couldn't give grants for? Televisions. I developed the skill of listening to conversations about replacement televisions while simultaneously writing down "essential replacement bedding, clothing and etecteras" with the other hand and made sure that they knew that when the cheque arrived it was theirs to spend on whatever they wished and that it would be about the cost of a TV plus next year's licence fee too.

I got threatened, was physically attacked, got spat on and on occasion, like all of us, had to have a Police escort running interference in a patrol car so that I could drive away without disgruntled claimants being able to follow me to my home. Government after government told us that we had job for life and that folk with such security didn't need pay rises. Tabloid after tabloid made wonderful claims about Civil Service pensions (thinking "Mandarin" level, not local "Potato") and that brings me nicely back to my point. About ruddy time I hear you say.

Well, it's ten years early but I was just wondering...

Civil Service Potato pensions have been privatized of course and the company that feeds off the system like lords now runs the pension schemes efficiently has announced that I can keep track of my pension online - just register and they send you the logon-details. I registered, twice. Called three times. Have just received my third letter (see above) - the letter announcing the PIN number that will unlock the online holy grail and let me see my pile of shiny sparkling gold, silver and pirate rubies and emeralds. Except that the letter proudly proclaims 'ere is your PIN and points to an empty space. Blank. Nothing. Da nada. I had two other people check the letter in case I had lost my marble (I only have one remaining). Nope. Was it a peel-off? Nope. I x-rayed it - no watermark either. No PIN, none whatsoever anywhere on this computah-produced, automatically generated letter.

The call centre, naturally, insists that this cannot be the case and I am obviously running some sort of scam.

There I was all ready to have a hysterical laugh at my - cough cough, ahem - "pension" expectations and I now find that I have been frozen in my tracks until I can provide a Tupperware tub full of DNA and handwritten signed sworn references from any three of a Doctor, Bishop or Member of Parliament that has known me since birth.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme bollocks eh?