The office has gone into a moving frenzy.  Everywhere we look there is rubbish, boxes, dust and chaos.

“It looks like Dunkirk,” Malcolm observes.

I think Dunkirk was more orderly.

This is pure panic packing, brought on by this morning’s missive:   As you know, the firm is relocating next weekend.   All non-essential items will be transported overnight beginining 24th May.  Please have them all packed, labelled and ready by 5pm today and on a rolling basis until Thursday.   All essential items will be moved over the weekend and must be packed, labelled and ready to go, no later than 5pm on Friday.’

“How are we supposed to decide what’s essential and what’s not?” Melinda frowns.

“Just think about what stuff you use all the time, that’s essential,” Lynnette advises. “And the stuff you don’t isn’t.”

“So, my vanity mirror would be essential but my hole punch wouldn’t?”

“Yeah.”

Hole punches are for filing.  And she never does any of that.

“What about stuff I use occasionally?”

Like her brain?

“Dunno?  Danielle, what do you think?”

“If you’re going to use it this week then keep it, if not pack it.”

Taking this to heart, she moves her nail varnish collection to the “essential” items pile and pushes her calculator over to the other.

In the midst of this tricky job, Jeannette arrives with a trolley full of plastic crates.

“Do we have to pack up all the stuff in our drawers?” Melinda asks her.

“Yes.”

“Can’t you just seal ‘em up with sellotape?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“But it’s taking me ages to sort out my make-up.”

“Well, you’d better get on with it then.  Four crates per person,” she advises us, as her boys begin to unload.

“I couldn’t fit my stationery into four of those tiny things” Liz protests, “Never mind my files.”

“Well, you’re going to have to,” she snaps. “Management Orders – four boxes each, no more.”

“How can that be sensible?” she retorts. “The fee earners have hundreds of case files to move.  The secretaries only have their desk tidies and a couple of David Beckham calendars.”

“We have more than that!”  Danielle argues.

“Oh, yes, I forgot about your collection of cuddly toys and the signed photograph of Robbie Williams.”

“Look,” Jeannette puts her hand on her hips. “If you want to argue amongst yourselves go ahead.  I have a pre-determined number of boxes for each team.  I’ll leave them in the middle of the room and you can wrestle each other for them.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”  With a snap of her fingers the boxes are deposited in a heap on the floor.

There is a scrum as Liz dives to retrieve as many as she can.  She manages to give Lynnette the brush off, sidesteps Celia and begins to drag a dozen crates across the floor.

“I know four isn’t enough but do you really need twelve?”  I ask.

“Absolutely,” she nods, “I have all my books from law school, precedent files and case law notes; not to mention my collection of Law Society Gazettes.”

“And you’ll need three crates just to transport all the chocolate you’ve been hording,” Alex remarks.

“I do not need three crates for that!”

“No, my mistake: four.”

She flashes him an indignant scowl and continues her trek.   Alex and I grab the remaining crates – six each – and head off to our offices to begin packing.   I try asking Melinda to assist but she is too busy sorting her multicoloured biro collection.   All six of my crates fill up with the files from one case alone and Dan, Jane and Tarquin don’t even have any.   Jeannette is summoned back.

“Yes?”

“We don’t have enough crates for all our files,” Jane informs her.

“As I told your colleagues, earlier, that’s not my problem.”

“Then whose problem is it?”

“Yours – you will all have to rationalise your stuff.”

“I don’t think you understand, Jeannette, we cannot rationalise our stuff because ‘our stuff’ is what generates income for the firm.”

“You have the same amount of crates as all the other teams,” she informs her.

“Then that’s the problem.  The other teams do not have anything like the same volume of documentation as we have.”

“I only ordered what I was told to order,” she shrugs. “Take it up with the Management Board if you have a problem.”

“The Management Board?”

“Yeah, they set the quotas; said they didn’t want tons of junk being shipped to the new place.”

There is no reasoning with her; her mouth is set in that pinched little line we all know and hate.  So, we decide to try plan b: reason with the secretaries.

“It would be easier to persuade North Korea to give up nuclear weapons,” Alex points out.

“Don’t be so defeatist,” Jane snaps. “They don’t need all those boxes.  They will have to let us have some of them.”

But they don’t.  Danielle’s is stuffed full of stationery, Lynnette’s is brimming with office accessories and Melinda has filled her remaining three with six months worth of my filing.

“We don’t have any to spare,” Danielle says defiantly.

“What about that one?” She points to Melinda’s cosmetics crate.

“One box is not going to solve the problem.”

This is true.  As a rough estimate, we need twice the number that Jeannette deposited to accommodate all our files.  There is nothing for it: we must speak to The Boss.

“I don’t want to be bothered with nonsense like this,” he snaps.

“That,” Jane sniffs.  “Is the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she sighs. “If you had bothered yourself with nonsense like this when the Management Board agreed the stupid quota then we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“You are educated people,” he waves his arm. “Transporting lever arch files around the corner is not rocket science, use your initiative!”

Jane emerges looking more irritable than before.

“Use our initiative!” she scoffs. “Why are we only allowed to do that when they’ve messed up?”

“Can’t we just order some more?” Alex asks.

“Apparently not, not at such short notice.”

We survey the scene.  “We only have enough for about half our files.”

“What about the rest?” Liz frowns. “We can’t leave them behind.”

“What would happen if we did?”

“We’d be sacked.  He said so.”

“I see.  So what can we jettison without losing sleep?”

“Tarquin,” we all say at once.

“I fear he will only stow away,” she laughs.  “Anything else?”

“The partners?”

“The secretaries?”

“The Boss?”

“If ‘we’re getting down to brass tacks, then so be it,” she smirks. “We take only the most useful members of the team.”

That being us, we relax.

“In the meantime,” she continues, “I have an idea, you make a start on the packing and I’ll see what I can do.”

Trusting our fate (once again) to Jane, we return to our rooms and begin to pack – in between fielding phone calls,  chasing the courts and composing e-mails to our opponents.  I don’t make much progress; every ten minutes I find another depressing token of my legal career – my first bad appraisal from The Boss; my first disappointing pay rise, my first tax return; the job offer I turned down;the dictaphone tape we used to spy on Miranda and The Boss….

That last one is a big distraction; I had forgotten how sickeningly salacious their “courtship” was.

In the meantime, Jeannette sends another missive, reminding us that the first removals begin tonight and that we ‘must have our equipment ready to go asap.’

Alex and Liz call another meeting.

“I’ve been thinking,” Liz suggests.  “We can ship the first batch tonight, go over tomorrow, unpack and bring the boxes back for another go.”

“Good idea, but we have tons of work to do and even with your convoy idea; I don’t think we would be able to move it all.”"Well, we’ll have to do our best.”

We are not the only ones with difficulties. Tarquin is beside himself at the thought of leaving some of his precious colour-coded files behind and, even Malcolm is struggling to accommodate all his West Brom memorabilia.  Only The Boss is happy – his three files (previous profits, present profits and profit forecasts) are safely packed way with his spare ties, bonsai tree and assorted executive toys.

At 5pm the removals team arrives and, in spite of our unreadiness, boxes are shifted, heaved and hauled away.  By 7pm there are no containers left, but hundreds of files remain on the shelves.

“What happens if we can’t shift them all?” Alex asks.”It gets binned, so Jeannette says.  There are new tenants moving in next week.”

“Next week?!”

“They’ve sublet the building until the present lease runs out.”

“Great.  Well, let’s hope Jane has a solution, or it’s going to take a miracle to get out in time.”

The next morning, we head over to the new place to unpack.  We return to find there is mounting panic on the floor.

“Can I have one?”  Dan pleads, “I’ve got tons of  stuff I need to transport.”

“No, go and get your own,” Alex rebukes him.

“I would but I have to fly to Geneva in half an hour.”

“Poor excuse.”

He pulls a pathetic face at Liz, who relents.  “All right then, just one, but for files only.  Not hair products.”

Alex and I flash her disapproving looks.

“What?”

“We liked it better when you hated him,” Alex sniffs.

But Dan isn’t the only one besieging us for our containers.  Half the team makes a play for them; the partners are the worst – first pleading then bullying us to give them up.  But we resist and mount a surveillance operation to protect them.  Meanwhile, every spare box, container and pot is pressed into service.  Clive and Malcolm almost come to blows over a M&S carrier bag found behind the photocopier.

“It’s mine!”

“I saw it first!”

“No you didn’t!”

There is nothing left to utilise and only a minor miracle can prevent us from leaving half our files behind.  But, just in the nick of time, Jane arrives with an armada of cardboard box-carrying paralegals, trainees and support staff.

“The little ships!” Malcolm almost weeps with joy.

“Where did you get these?” Clive demands.

“We did a sweep of the local markets, shops, pubs and cafes then we called our archiving people.  Simple.”

So simple he hadn’t thought of it.

“Well done.”

“Yes indeed!” Malcolm beams. “There is a German insurance company moving in here next week, I thought we were going to have to surrender our files!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Clive snaps. “We would have found some way of resolving the problem.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.  Look, it doesn’t matter now, does it?

“No, thanks to Jane and her Churchillian efforts.  It’s not the first time she’s turned a disaster into a triumph,” he smiles.

“And I’m sure it won’t be the last,” she agrees.

She has, after all, made a career out of it.