It's that Friday feeling again. The weekend is so close you can almost smell the beer and take-away curry and you are 'clock-watching' every few minutes just so you can convince yourself that 5pm (or whatever time you can wrench yourself away from work) is getting nearer.

Here's a socio-comical (I think I may have invented a new word here!) insight into the life of a Paris Plongeur (a hotel dogsbody), which might just make you glad you have the job you hate:

"I think I should start by saying that a plongeur is one of the slaves of the modern world....His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack. He is cut off from marriage, or, if he marries, his wife must work too. Except by a lucky chance, he has no escape from this life, save into prison...[Plongeurs] have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If plongeurs thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them."

Taken from George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933.

Anyone wishing to convert from their nice, 9-5 office job to plongeur-dom should contact Washers-Up Anonymous or the No-Prospects Recruitment Agency for further advice and counselling.

Well, in reading this you have just got yourself 3 minutes closer to the weekend ;)

....(and in writing this I am eleven minutes closer to drowning my creativity in a large bottle of real ale)