RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30129, 13 May 1963, Page 21

RANDOM REMINDER

IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT

We are curious about caretakers, the sort who are left at night to empty the ash trays in large office buildings. It must be a strange and lonely life, without the romanticism attached to the work of those charged with the maintenance of lighthouses, or that aloof breed, soccer goal-keepers. What does a caretaker think, as he tidies up the muddle of a day’s work? Does he ever suffer from delusions of grandeur? One can picture the man being seized with a desire to sit in the managing director’s chair, to smoke one of the managing

director’s cigars, and to make a managing directorial speech proclaiming that the caretaker is the only member of the staff really pulling his weight Or does he make some slight obeisance whenever he passes the board room door? It must be a great temptation, at times, to interfere with the business of the office. What chaos the man could cause if he chose to leave chits addressed to a departmental head, and purporting to come from another? He might occasion all manner of diverting strife; perhaps a simpler form would merely be the removal, from one desk, of a few

articles of value and the deposit of them in another. But there is this to be said for the janitor’s life —when he walks about the building, hearing the last jarring echoes of the head salesman's laughter and savouring the faint delicious perfume from the quarters of the typing pool, he is a free man. If he wants to do the Mambo on the office counter, there is no-one to stop him. He can drive the lift for hours, if he has the yen. There is no reason why he should not, at his 3 a.m. tea break, play the oboe, loudly. He is no bird in this gilded cage.