Eye strain, you strain, we all strain for weevils.

Good grief.

I've been a temporary part-time public servant for two weeks and I haven't blogged about it. Not because I didn't want you to know.

Heck no.

It's because I've been so bloody exhausted. How about that. Not that I ever thought people in the public service didn't work hard. No, seriously. I hate snide remarks about government employees about as much as I hate snide remarks about Christians. Or school teachers. Or hunky men who will only give you the time of day if they're wearing a digital watch. (Actually, that one I don't mind too much.)

I'd like to say the government called me in to do crisis counselling with some high-ranking officials who wouldn't speak to anyone with fewer than three undergraduate degrees in unrelated fields, or to do some quick code-breaking on a communication they had just received from their double agent in Belchistan, or to lend my expertise in evaluating the program theory for their next excursion into pico-technology as it lends itself to intra-office diplomacy.

However, their need, at this time, was for someone willing to stare at a computer screen for seven hours a day, and who knew how to use the cut and paste function in Word documents.

I feel I have conducted myself thus far with aplomb. It has certainly been an aplombinable job.

It has, however, left me with a wretched case of eye-strain. Fortunately, a very good friend of mine, Bronzewing, had a knee operation on Tuesday, and so could share her prescription- strength ibuprofen with me when we had lunch together on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, the effects of this wonderful little mothers' helper had worn off by Friday evening, and this, your Honour, is how I found myself lured into the seemy netherworld of Insurance Fraud.

Oh yes.

With a brain functioning only from the medulla oblongata downwards, I calmly and unhesitatingly reversed Bill's jeep into a brand new commodore ute, which was parked half a kilometre away from me in a carpark stunningly well lit by 10,000 unflickering, naked, fluorescent light tubes.

I briefly considered telling myself there was probably only a rubber-smear from my very soft tail-gate, and driving away. Then my curiosity (or was it my conscience?) got the better of me, and I got out and had a look. I briefly considered telling myself their insurance would cover it, and driving away. Then I noticed someone sitting in a nearby car. They hadn't noticed me yet. Then, yes, it was definitely my conscience this time, got the better of me, and I went back to the jeep, pulled a piece of paper out of my diary, and blurrily wrote my phone number on it (the eyestrain) and stuck it under his wiper.

Then I drove away. I added up all the money I had been making which I was going to put towards the kitchen renovations, and mentally redirected it towards paying for a new front panel on the commodore. Then I felt good. I mean, I felt really good. I was so pleased with myself, and immediately started drafting sermons on how once, many years ago, I had been tempted to drive away after dinging someone's brand new commodore, but had decided that the cost to my conscience would have been more than it was worth. I was really relieved, thinking I had narrowly escaped feeling my heart grow hard with self-justification.

Then the guy rang up and, when I told him I wasn't insured, basically because I'm nationally recognised as an insurance risk, he offered to use his insurance and just get me to pay his excess.

AND I ACCEPTED.

And I also accepted his kind words of thanks for leaving my number.

There. Now you know. I'm a complete fraud*.








*Any comments to the contrary will be gratefully and shamefacedly received. Any comments to the similar will be tersely ignored.