STATUS QUO

Returning to work after a period of leave is enough to make Alan Cochrane nervous

Starting work is anxiety-inducing enough for school and university leavers, but restarting work for those of an older vintage – like yours truly – is just as worrying.

Regular readers might remember from last month’s epistle that I have been on what is nowadays euphemistically called ‘gardening leave’. Some of you might also be interested to learn that everything has gone splendidly on the horticultural front.

However, I find myself in a slightly jittery state as I prepare to return to the coalface after a five-month absence. Lucky old you, I hear you say. Well, yes – and no. Yes, in that not doing the day job for a prolonged period does help clear the head. No, in that as I prepare to enter the fray once more, the question arises with monotonous regularity: Can I still do it?

By the time you read this I shall probably have restarted the daily grind. But as I prepare myself mentally, the same thoughts keep coming back: Will anyone remember me? Will I remember anyone – who they are, what their names are, what they do, how important or otherwise they are?

Some of you might know that I scribble about Scottish politics when my nose is not at the grindstone at the behest of this publication’s illustrious editor. It has not been that long since there was an election to the Holyrood parliament, when a whole host of new brighteyed and bushy-tailed MSPs joined the ranks of the familiar re-treads who’ve inhabited the place for aeons. And I was just getting to know who was whom and who did what when my long lay-off began.

I’m not referring to the old stagers or the various party leaders. No, I’m talking here about all the new boys and girls. Will they treat me with the courtesy and respect that my old bones have come to expect? Will they stand aside at the bar so I can quench my thirst without having to queue behind a host of people who drink coffee and half-pints of shandy? And never mind the politicians, will the bar staff remember me?

And horror of horrors, have the powersthat-be at Holyrood, who generally don’t know the difference between a decent claret and a glass of dandelion and burdock, changed the wine list again and without my having had the chance to cast my eye over their choices?

These are important matters, on a par with the seating arrangements in the Holyrood chamber’s press box. I don’t imagine for a second that some young upstart hasn’t purloined my traditional seat in the corner of the back row. I’m pretty sure there won’t be much chance of my regaining it without either an ugly scene or a bribe.

I shall have to get used to writing to deadline again, but after so many decades in this onceinky trade, that has become second nature. I was appalled recently, while assisting in the production of a school newspaper, to find that the bulk of the staff were actually encouraged to stop for lunch when there was only an hour to go before deadline with oodles of pages not completed. Incredible. I enjoy lunch as much as the next person – maybe even more – but deadlines are sacrosanct.

In the midst of all of this worrying about restarting the day job, I did decide to dip my toe in the water to see if anything had changed on the Scottish political scene. I signed up for a seminar, organised by Edinburgh University, and attended by no fewer than seven professors and half a dozen of our elected tribunes. Guess what? Absolutely nothing has changed; not a thing. Nicola Sturgeon has made roughly the same speech about another independence referendum every week of those past five months. Neither have Holyrood’s warring parties altered their entrenched positions during my time laying gravel paths and digging up tatties.

It would be nice to think that they might stay like that until I can get a handle on things once more. That’s not too much to ask, now, is it?