The self-importance of being an admin type

I bet you didn’t know that beneath this somewhat brash and slightly rotund exterior lies a much softer persona. Yep, it’s me – difficult for my reader to acknowledge, perhaps, but it’s true.

To prove the point, here’s a lovely picture, taken last night (June 16) at Casa Almondo in Suffolk.

A little baby Roebuck and mum, happily munching our hedge. Ahh. How sweet.

I won’t spoil the moment by adding a photo of me lighting the barbeque.

But I digress. The focus of my moan today is any person in a fairly menial, but nonetheless useful, position who becomes too full of their own self-importance.

I call the first defendant/defendants – the receptionist/ receptionists at my doctors’ surgery.

I had to pop in last week to have my follow-up Hep. A jab. I’m now covered for 20 years, which is good news as we are planning to visit Scotland soon.

Anyway, I arrived at the surgery to be confronted by three people on reception - one of them on the phone.

All three ignored me for several minutes, with the one on the phone also drinking a coffee and eating a slice of cake.

One of them eventually spotted me (not difficult bearing in mind my alleged slightly rotund exterior – see opening sentence for reference) and asked if anyone was helping me.

I said no - and the coffee-drinking, cake-munching one, now off the phone, said "How can I help".

So full of their own self-importance. I doubt even Shrek’s donkey would have grabbed their attention, jumping up and down and shouting “Choose me, choose me.”

Mind you, they were pure amateurs compared with the people manning the Dubai car registration department back in the good old days when I first had to deal with them.

Make sure you have all documents you need to renew your annual car registration. Check. Do a double check. Check.

Wait for two or three hours in the department, hoping one of the important paper shufflers deems to call you over. No orderly queueing. Just a case of calling forward whoever took their fancy. Choose me, choose me.

When you did get to hand your paperwork over, it would usually be met with a gruff “need your passport”.

Is that copy or original, sir. “Copy”. OK, I’ll come back tomorrow.

Next day, same scenario, same wait. Then you are called forward – the chosen one. Hand over all the paperwork, including a copy of passport.

“Need your passport.” But you said yesterday a copy. “No, need passport.”

Needless to say, I was never caught out again. Subsequent visits saw me take every conceivable document with me – including my 25 yards breaststroke certificate from 1967 – plus a good book.

Oh the fun we had in the sun.