In the interests of keeping what is laughably referred to as my cash flow in some way fluid before I take up my new and great job, I recently decided it would be a good idea to find gainful and temporary employment.

So minded, I contacted a variety of agencies around the capital, by email and phone and slung my CV around anyone who said they could find me a job. No dice. People tell me there are no jobs. People tell me they are busy. People tell me they need to “know more about my mid- to long-term career plans”. I considered emailing back to that last one with “you know as much as I do, babe” but, on the whole, decided against it.

In the interests of expediency, I called up the agency for whom I have temped off and on for the past 5 years or so. They are very good, all told, and have looked after me very well. The only reason I didn’t call them before now was… well, briefly stated, the jobs they gave me were a little NHS heavy.

Not that I have anything against the NHS. Far from it. It’s just that I have worked in various temporary positions for the agency over the past years and I was sort of hoping for some variety. Also, I do find administrative positions within the Health Service can be really rather stressful. Mainly because of the sheer inefficiency of the whole affair.

Not inefficiency of the people, you understand. Not at all. The NHS is staffed, where it is not staffed by hapless academics on a month or 2 out, by profoundly capable and committed individuals. It’s the system, the bearaucracy, the endless, trance-enducing tangle that the staff need to wade through every day to get their daily business done.

Inevitably, my agency found me a job in a local hosptial, as an administrator. I started today. This particular hospital is trying out a new networking arrangement for the NHS, to which all hospitals will be switching over the next few units of time. It’s very swish and efficient and seems to work very nicely…except when it doesn’t. Like today.

I could not access the network because I did not possess a security card. I could not get a security card because I did not have my passport and proof of address with me. When I do supply these things tomorrow, it will take up to 3 days for me to get a security card. I am only in this job for a week. Once I get the security card, I have to deal with the fact that no one but the man I have replaced seems to know how to do the job I am meant to do. He, needless to say, did not leave any instructions.

Tomorrow, apart from proving who I am to IT, I have to run a clinic. I don’t know what that means. Neither the nice ladies in my office nor my line manager know what it means either, as they have never managed a clinic. Why should they have? That was what my predecessor was for.

So tomorrow morning I shall be standing in a clinic, being shouted at by receptionists, doctors and patients about problems with a new system which I cannot access and do not know how to use even if I could.

You know it makes sense.