One morning I was sitting at my desk, which had been thankfully saved from destruction after Tutu had been deconsultantised and restored to sanity, when I found a passage in a letter which made my hair stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine. It began innocently enough:

'Dear Miss MacDonald,

A little while ago now I wrote to you giving some general information of the time I spend as an adult baby. You were kind enough to
respond saying that you enjoyed the article and asking if I could expand a little in a further article. Well here goes - I hope it will be
interesting to you.

I am very lucky in my working life as I am able to work flexitime - that is I have to do a set number of hours each week but - '

I dropped the letter in horror, and ran to the door. 'Julie Anne!' I shouted. Julie Anne was on her fifteen minute petticoated.com lunch break, but she came anyway - the girls are very good like that.

'Has Marcia - sorry, Miss Bottomley - seen this letter from Baby Amanda?'

'Yes I think so. Aren't the letters meant to go to her first, so she can put the unsuitable ones aside?'

'It mentions flexitime. You know what new management is like, she has just finished that course you know. God only knows what nonsense is floating around in her head'.

In the 1980s I was silly enough to employ a management consultant, who saw her job as the task of all management consultants, that is, to totally destroy the firm. One of her weapons was flexitime. 'The staff will appreciate it', she claimed with a kind of syrupy, padded-shoulder efficiency. 'It will give them more choice regarding their working hours'.

She was dead right about that. Flexitime meant that everybody turned up to work at 10am, and went home at 4pm. And that's for three days a week, four if you are very lucky. Suddenly we had changed from our traditional 50 hour week (we work Saturdays at petticoated.com), to barely 20 hours a week.

After I managed to get things back to normal, I gave orders to our security guard, Hamish MacDiarmind, one of the firm's most senior employees, to shoot on sight anybody holding a business and management degree who came within 25 yards of the petticoated.com gate. Hamish has a treasured collection of superb antique rifles, and has done a good deal of grouse shooting in his day, so I didn't think he would miss. The malefactor would then be carried to the works infirmary, and interrogated by Miss Gribble under a 5000 watt spotlight for 24 hours without sleep. After he or she had confessed all their crimes, and signed a document to that effect, they would be tarred and feathered, have a sign hung around their neck reading 'I am a management consultant', and then allowed to go free.

Some of the staff thought these measures to be somewhat draconian, which surprised me, because I thought that under the circumstances I was being very lenient and merciful. Anyhow, it worked. Flexitime has never been mentioned within these walls from that day to this.

Unfortunately, it was too late. Marcia had already read the letter and was at that moment in her office preparing a submission regarding flexitime for all employees. Julie Anne and I managed to kidnap her and, being at the end of our tether, resorted to hypnotism. We didn't have the traditional vest pocket watch of the matinee film serial, so Julie Anne made do with a digital alarm clock, which she swung in front of Marcia's glassy eyes and drooping eyelids by its electric cord. The worst moment was when we had sat Marcia in a chair, dimmed the lights, and Julie Anne said softly, 'You are beginning to feel very sleepy...' At that point Marcia looked up as bright as a button, and replied, 'Yes, I know. This place always affects me like that'.

Eventually we got her under, and now Marcia has never heard the word flexitime. It has been expunged from her memory, and long may it remain so.

As for the works sweep on this year's Grand National, I lost again. I don't think I have won a Grand National sweep in forty years. For a while none of us knew who the winner was, but it turned out to be Billy, the new office boy in the payroll department. The old-established staff never seem to win. Maybe I'll do better in the Derby.