We are, finally, installed in our new office.

Externally it resembles a slick, twenty first century law firm; internally it looks like a waste disposal site.

No one had time to declutter before they moved, so they are all doing it now.  Remnants of 30 years’ worth of legal practise litter the corridors – mouldy affidavits, moth-eaten textbooks, discarded lecture notes, and even the odd court gown.  Jane thinks we’ll find an abandoned trainee if we look hard enough.

But Jeannette is not happy.

“This was supposed to be done before we moved!” she shrieks.

“It would have been,” snorts Danielle, “if you hadn’t kept changing the moving date!”

“It wasn’t me!  It was the IT department; they couldn’t get their systems to work.”

And they still can’t: half the firm is still without an accounting function and the other half can only access e-mails on an intermittent basis.

“It’s like the good old days,” Malcolm chuckles. “Before we had all this technology nonsense.”

Danielle pulls a face. “And ‘ow the ‘ell did we manage then?”

“We used our initiative,” he taps his nose.

“Our what?”

“Our skill and cunning.”

Two abilities which have long since disappeared from this department.

As Melinda ably demonstrates. “So, like, what did we do before e-mail?” she asks.

“We wrote letters.”

“How did you do that before computers?”

God she is stupid.

“We used typewriters.”

“Really?  Like in old films?”

“Yes, like in old films.  Although, actually, it wasn’t so long ago, Melinda; we didn’t get a proper e-mail system here until 1998.”

“1998?”

For someone who can’t remember last week, this is a long time.

“Yes,” he nods. “I can remember when it came in.   It used to break down every five minutes and we all hated it.”

As we do now.

“But, if you didn’t have e-mail, it must have taken ages to type all those letters?”

“Legal secretaries were very efficient back then.”  In the good old days.  “They were specially trained to deal with all the old legal quirks we had.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for example, like the need to sew up documents.”

“Sew them?!” She looks as if he has just suggested ingesting them.

“Yes, all legal agreements or sworn documents used to be sewn together to stop the pages going astray.”

“I’m glad I don’t have to do any of that.”

Me too.  Melinda can barely manage typing.  Throw in a whole new skill set and she would spontaneously combust.

If that isn’t a case for bringing it back, I don’t know what is………

“Were telephones invented when you qualified?” Danielle’s lips contort into a mischievous smile.

“Yes, thank you Danielle.  I’m not that old.”

“What about fax machines?”

“Yes, although we didn’t have one where I worked.”

She looks at him as if he should be preserved.  “So, what did you do?  Rely on the post?!”

“Yes.”

Back then it wasn’t so extraordinary.

“We posted a letter and waited for a response.  That was the beauty of it,” he smiles. “We were not at the beck and call of the office 24 hours a day.”

Unlike now – where we not only have to speak to other people, we have to look at them too.

“Ms Black is online.” My computer tells me.  Bully for her; I think.  She’s one of the few people who are.

“Ms Black is online.”  It says again.   There is a little red box flashing in the right hand corner of my screen which I ignore.

“Ms Black is online.”

“Oh for goodness sake!”

“What’s the matter?” Liz pops her head around my door.

“This bloody system keeps telling me that Jane is online.  I don’t care if she’s in Outer Mongolia!”

“Oh,” she peers at the flashing box, “I think it may mean that she’s trying to make contact with you.  Click on it.”

I do.

A few moments later a distorted version of Jane’s face appearsn.

“Oh my god!”

“That’s not a very nice greeting,” she huffs.

“I wasn’t expecting to see your gurning face staring back at me.”

“I’m not gurning, I’m smiling.”

“It’s difficult to tell.”

Liz does an amusingly accurate impression of Jane’s “smiling.”

“I saw that!” she snaps.

“Oh great,” she sighs. “I can’t even pull a sneaky aside without Madam Dafarge witnessing it.”

For good measure, she makes a rude gesture at the screen

“I saw that as well.”

“You were meant to.  The only good thing about this is that you are too far away to do anything about it.”

“Oh!” Alex stumbles in.  “Is that some sort of futuristic hologram?”

“No, it’s Jane.”

“Oh.  She looks like that disembodied computer from Red Dwarf.”

“The senile one?”

“Yes.  Have they snapped her up for a new series?”

I shake my head.  “Sadly not; she’s on the new video con system, but I think she has the camera at a funny angle.”

“Yeah, move your lap top back a bit,” he tells her.

The screen flickers, goes blank and then comes back on with Jane looking decidedly more normal. “Greetings colleagues!”

“I don’t like this,” Liz shakes her head.  “It’s like Big Sister spying on us.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Jane agrees. “George Orwell has a lot to answer for.  Imagine if The Boss keeps popping in like this?”

“Like some sort of ghoulish spectre  – linking in from where ever he happens to be.”

“Like Obi-Wan Kenobi!” Alex exclaims.

“Who?”

“From Star Wars .  A brave and noble Jedi who sacrifices himself to save his pupil and then appears to him as a ghost in moments of torment.”

“Everything is a fantasy world to you, isn’t it?”

“It has to be,” he shrugs.   “It’s the only way I can get through the week.”

“Me too,” Liz agrees. “I alternate between being Carry Bradshaw and Linda Carter.”

“Wonder Woman?”

“Yeah, although that’s mainly because I would like to have a bottom small enough to wear hot pants.”

Jane is making one of her “give me strength” faces.

“And you, Helen,” Alex demands, “What do you fantasise about?

“Normality.”

But so long as I work at CWS that is one fantasy which will never become a reality.

“You would never fit in somewhere ‘normal’,” he scoffs.

“What is normal anyway?” asks Liz.

Certainly not this place.

“I think we are getting away from the point,” Jane sniffs.

“And what is that?”

“How do we halt the ever more intrusive advances of modern technology?”

“For once, I don’t think even you can do anything about that.”

“I’m sure there must be some thing we can do about it!” she sniffs.

“Oh, there is,” Alex agrees.

With a swift flick of his wrist,  he pulls out the plug.  Jane disappears in a puff of cyber smoke.  We stare at the blackened screen.

“I think I could get used to these video conferences,” Liz laughs. “They’ve much easier to control than the real thing.”

“Absolutely,” Alex agrees. “If you get fed up with them you just switch them off.   How marvellous.”

Indeed.  In fact, I’m beginning to think that virtual colleagues are the way forward.