41: Appraisal

The appraisal hut, set upon a mountain ledge, a ledge described on the information panel located in the visitors' car park as easing its way towards the sea at one millimetre a year, a ledge so rarely visible due to low floating white fluff ball clouds or its near cousin the heavy grey rain cloud, both alternating in encircling or rotating around its form on their drift across the sky. The building, a Quonset hut that the architects, Elmer and Peters, chose as a nod to the endless rows of Nissen huts around the army base they both grew up near in Perthshire, but seasoned with flavours acquired from their time studying architecture at Cornell. Let me give you a more recent example: a dog sets the vinegar on the windows sill, it has drunk half the bottle and is having a breather. Scanning the room, perhaps looking for something sweet for balance, it notices the tape recorder stuffed under one of the cushions on the settee, its whirring previously relegated amongst the indistinguishable hums and drones is now like a sharp, paw tapping ear worm shooting through the dog's senses. Its ear is now beside the Sanyo DR 101 Cassette Tape Deck Player poking out from under the sofa and it recognises its master's voice. “There’s something exalted in your doggy ways not such that you feel above your work, in fact you revel in the connection the role gives you to this canine holy fool you harbour within your furry dog body, but it also means you gnash your teeth at the mechanisms, the, er, let’s say administrative elements that are essential to optimum dog performance. I would go as far to say that you are openly hostile to anyone who fulfils these roles around you, be it dog, human or junk mail.” What is being set up in this place, what is the aim? Back to those thoughts, the ideas, the chat, all are the devices used to penetrate the thin space of the mind where the entire body is accessed. The mind lost in personality is like an open wound where flesh-eating bugs and the monsters of nightmares can dig in and work their way through the whole entity, devouring from top to bottom. A reel to reel is paused, its click the final exclamation sent out in to the dank murk, following on from the thousands of other audio snippets ricocheting, the backlog of those sent out ahead, now decaying along the vast chambers where they‘re picked up, drawn in to a loop again by microphones placed at intervals, to be fed back along vast drainage tunnels running parallel and travelling towards openings dotting the mountain's side. A voice is sent over the PA system in the waiting room: “Your body is marked by your working day. The chocolate muffin that is your one aim, your morning break treat displayed as your gut. The distant look you carry a pointer to the drowning out of your surroundings through ear buds pumping inane podcast chat. A tetchy manner a reaction to the supposed double standards in every element of your life weighed on your sagging shoulders. You, them, everyone around perpetuating your own miseries through the subjugation of your unique lives, turning your body into a fathom long trap” The intern's ear is beside the Sanyo DR 101 Cassette Tape Deck Player poking out from under the sofa cushion and they begin to make out the low monotone delivery of their boss coming from its tiny speaker. “You’re in the job? No? The job is in you? So, let’s backtrack. Every year I bring you into the sofa area to renew the contract we have. Hmm? So I make cosmetic adjustments, affirm some aspects, weigh up whether some braces need to be tightened, loosened, replaced, decide whether you can be trusted and embody some aspects or you need to be … forewarned … that, hmmm, you can or may be ejected … I administer some tinctures and soporifics, prick your foot pads to see if your reactions are dulled enough… off you go into a new year! Next! Right?” Though the intern couldn’t know this by examining the illegible biro on the cassette case sleeve approximating the words ‘Appraisal A262, November 1973’ they are holding in their hands, they are sure this is a repeat and, as if the realisation we’re the cue for the next event, the door to the room opens and a flustered young man stumbles through rattling another cassette tape, babbling apologies about “the wrong tape”.