By Jonathan Kay

Of course I just tell people that I work at the newspaper. I don't volunteer what I do exactly, I'll let them request the specifics. If they're to presume that I'm a reporter and then ask 'oooh gonna write my story then? Lord knows I've got a few' (they never do) well that's their choice. Of course there are those suspicious of snooping scoopsters, and probably with good reason, so if that’s the case then I'd be up front about it, just as I would be if the first lot ever bothered to ask and as I am with you now. I work on the classifieds, classified advertising in the provincial press. I sit at a computer with telephone headset and cup of coffee, transcribing callers' descriptions of goods for sale, property to let, lonely hearts to heal and so on. Car Stereo with CD and RDS, 50 quid. What's your number? Yeah it'll be in tomorrow's... that's three quid sir, we take all the cards. That kind of thing. Not so glamorous. Interesting? Far from it. Well paid? No. The pay is adequate, but that's not why I do it. I do it for the perks, or to be exact, a perk. A bonus that at first appears as mundane as the job itself , but that's in fact far more impressive than any other 'I work in the media' boast. It's not an incentive you'll see in the job description, nor be informed of at interview. It's something you have to find for yourself, and if you don't know about it beforehand then well you've probably got no reason to go looking for it.

I'd only been there a couple of months when I discovered it. I'd sort of finished university (there had been some difficulties) and was filled with none of the usual desires for either career or adventure that had so captivated my peers. I was content just slumming Chez Parents. Of course Mum and Dad (Dad mainly) weren't so keen, the dole doesn’t go far, and even I felt bad about constantly sponging tenners from them, still smarting from the costs of my education. So I took a position at the newspaper answering phones for the classifieds, which was I told myself, kind of a media job. I displayed a decent enough telephone manner, and after a perfunctory interview was told to be in the office at nine the following Monday.

After a brief tour of the building it took all of half an hour to get me familiarised with the booking system used for collating the classified advertisements. You just type in what the caller wants to say, the programme compiles the ad, calculates the cost and then you run through the customer's card details. Easy. By lunch time I was as competent as any of the other staff on classifieds, of which there were three: Saima, a quiet Muslim girl who looked to be in her early twenties, Nicola, big and beaming thirtysomething, slight touch of the 'I'm mad me!' about her, but otherwise pleasant enough, and then there was Jason. I was never going to like Jason no matter how hard I tried, which says as much about my prejudices and indiscretions as it does his. Twat's haircut, too much gel or wax or whatever it was. Lime green shirt, the uniform of the tosser. First choice of conversational topic: Saturday's football, followed by how pissed he was before during and after. His opinion of the day's front page was always 'Look at the tits on that!' I'm sure you've all met Jasons before, most offices have them these days.

It was a month in, six weeks maybe, and things were going as well as could be expected. The job was demanding enough to not be entirely tedious, particularly in the lunch hour when people had time to spare to make their calls. There would be quiet spots too - first thing in the morning was usually slow, mid afternoon calm. For the most part however there were more than enough folk looking to flog their cars or furniture or whatnot to keep us well occupied. I drank lots of coffee, I stopped wearing a watch and the days melted. In many ways I was quite happy then, I mean it wasn't my dream lifestyle (I still lived with my parents for a start) but I had a bit of money, a place to sleep, I'd go out at night, you know just rolling along, no pressures. Jason however was still a severe irritance, and the only real problem that I had with my job. We shared a hallway, photocopier and fax with the sales team who spent their days haranguing businesses into forking out for that slightly bigger space, or the benefits of a colour spread and so on. Sales staff are by nature cocky and self sure, but I found their company far preferable to Jason's. OK they found it hard to drop the sell sometime, to wind down the show, but a least they weren't... well Jasons basically.

It was a reasonably quiet afternoon and Jason had been going on about cars, his car, why cars were indispensable, why fuel was too expensive, why habitually speeding was fine if like Jason you were an expert motorist, why environmentalists were all poofs and so on. Then he asked, quite unexpectedly,

'So what kinda motor've you got then Si?’

First of all, my mates call me Si. I'd told Jason my name was Simon, but he'd taken the liberty of abbreviating it anyway. As I generally considered any dialogue with Jason to be a waste of time I hadn't bothered to correct him, even when he realised the inherent comic potential of referring to both myself and Saima as Si (or indeed, Sai)! Truly a great time was had by none. Anyway I don’t have a licence, let alone own a car, but I thought it wise not to declare this, should Jason consider it reason for another hilarious and foul mouthed assessment of my masculinity. Secondly I could not help but notice that he chose to ask me first, despite having shown no interest in his office broadcast, rather than Saima or Nicola who thankfully sat closer to him than I.

'None at the moment. I only live 10 minutes walk away.' (In fact it was more like half an hour, and I took the bus most days).

'Fuckin hell. Couldn't live without it me. I'd be fucked. Fuel strikes last year were a nightmare. Tell you what though, I'm feeling the need for a new motor now. Bout that time again, know what I mean?' (I didn't). 'Yeah what I'm looking for right is a Golf GTI, the fuckin bollocks mate.'

Then it hit me. That was it. For the first time since those tentative early days when I began working at the newspaper, when I had to make conversation because it was polite and expected, I actually replied to one of Jason's statements with a question of my own, with an invitation for further discussion.

'Oh yeah? So how much is one of those then?'

Jason didn't appear to notice that this was completely out of character for me as he replied immediately and exhaustively.

'Well I can't afford a new one, more’s the pity, so I'm going for like an R Reg or summat. Maybe fifty or sixty K on the clock. Reckon I could get one for five or six grand, though you do see a lot of silly prices in the car mags. It'd depend on like the condition and that, alloys, decent stereo I'd go a bit more. 'Tallic blue'd be sweet. I've been checking the ads every day this week but I aint seen nothin' yet. Like I say a lot of people want silly money for 'em, or they've driven 'em into the ground and that. I just need to keep an eye out, wait till I see the perfect motor and go straight for the fucker.'

And there it was. I have never been adverse to a little prankery, and though it had gotten me into no small trouble on more than one occasion in the past, this seemed a perfect opportunity. I had to be careful however, this could backfire quite nastily if detected: In a first case scenario open hostility with Jason could result which would no doubt prove quite unbearable. In the second, Jason may take a little good natured joking as a desire upon my part to be his 'mate', mate. Both were unthinkable. No my little wheeze must remain secret. I'm sure you've guessed by now what I had in mind. It was one of the more conventional perks of ours that we could run in ads for free; why not enter some bogus ad for Jason's dream ride, and then try not to piss myself laughing as he calls the baffled employees of a Chinese takeaway to ask about the non-existent car they had for sale?

As I said before, I would have to be cautious. For that reason I left it a full week before placing my trap. There had to be a reasonable amount of time before myself or any of the other staff could realistically claim to have forgotten exactly what car Jason was looking for and so not have informed him of such an ad being placed. Fortunately Jason did seem aware that none of us had any real interest in cars, or indeed anything he had to say (not that it stopped him saying it of course). I was almost beaten to it on several occasions when Jason spotted seemingly appropriate vehicles, on one occasion taking the call himself and arranging to meet the current owner on his lunch break. Fortunately for me there was always some point of objection: The sound of the engine, the colour, the state of the bodywork, the seller being 'a shifty looking fucker', that kind of thing. So after a quietish afternoon, just before the day's deadline came up, I began typing:

VW Golf GTI. Blue. S Reg. 40K. Alloys. One owner. £4500.

I had no numbers of takeaways or cab firms to hand, so I just chose a prefix of one of the mobile phone networks and then typed 6 digits at random. The next day the ad would appear in 'vehicles for sale £2000 - £10 000', and before long Jason would be tearing his hair out. I shut down my computer and left, content with my day's work.

It was with some trepidation that I entered the office that next day. Jason was already there at his desk and he had picked up a copy of today's paper on his way into the building, as did most of the staff. Fortunately he had only just begun reading (from the back page naturally) and had yet to commence his daily trawl through the motors section. I'd almost put it of my mind when at around eleven I heard from behind me, with ascending volume and tempo, 'Fuck - in - 'ell. Fuckin' ell. Fuck! You fuckin' beauty! Come on!'

And then more clearly, to all of us.

'Who took this? Who took the ad for the GTI?'

I was just about to make some damn foolish gesture of ignorance, an over eager shrug or a contrived 'dunno mate', when my phone range, sparing me from his attention. I answered the call as politely as I could, and began running through the customers ad request as quickly as possible. 'Oh fuck it.' I heard Jason say, as he lifted his phone and began dialling. I couldn't miss this. Fortunately my customer's ad requirements were brief, and as I took his payment details I put him on hold, fobbing him off with talk of some non existent delays in our card processing system.

Jason was speaking, someone had answered his call. I'd half expected the number to be invalid.

'Yeah? Still there is it? When can I come and see it?'

No. That's not right. It couldn't be. I made that advert up. I made that advert up off the top of my head. Something was very wrong.

'Half an hour? Yeah I can take an early lunch. No problem mate. Just give us your address...'

Wait, there must be another ad. That's it. There must be another ad. Maybe he's seen an even better deal than my little invention. I took a deep breath, rubbed my eyes and then swore as I realised I still had my customer kept on hold. I gave my best attempt at an apology and then ended the call with quiet impolite abruptness. Jason meanwhile had put his phone down. He snatched up his car keys from his rubbish strewn desk, flung them in the air and caught them, grinning triumphantly.

'Found a car then?' I asked, sheepishly.

Jason turned back to his desk and grabbed his copy of today's paper. He strode over to where I sat and dumped the paper onto my desk. I looked downwards. Several of the line ads were circled in red ballpoint, but there was one which had been circled, underlined, bedecked with exclamation marks and then circled again. My vision was blurring, and I felt a tide of bile biting at the back of my throat, but I could hear Jason quite clearly reading out the text to me verbatim.

'V Dub Golf GTI. Blue. S Reg. Forty K. Alloys. One owner. Four and a half grand. Fucking. Wicked. Mate.'

I looked up, but he was already out the door. I held steady for a good five minutes, my knuckles whitening as I gripped the base of my chair. And then without warning, I leapt from my seat, ran to the gents, and vomited.

Some time later, after a long lunch of painkillers and aimless wandering about the city centre, I returned to the office. Jason was sat with his feet resting upon his desk. He was on a call, receiver cradled between shoulder and ear, and as I entered the room he winked and gave me a cocky thumbs up. I felt queasy, but managed a wan smile in return. Nichola was out on lunch, but Saima was present, seeming as she did to never leave the office. She asked how I was, appearing genuinely concerned. I uttered some unconvincing story about a dodgy takeaway the night before, told her I'd be OK, but I could see she was unconvinced. She frowned and turned back to her work, but as soon as her attention appeared to return to her screen, her eyes flicked back to meet mine, and then immediately broke contact. Still a little dazed I fell into my chair and rubbed my face. I put on my telephone headset, logged into the system, and for the next two hours was kept occupied by the day’s reassuringly genuine business.

Inevitably a mid-afternoon lull provided an opportunity for Jason to recount his meeting with my phantom vendor.

'I tell you what mate he was a funny old bird, this geezer selling the car. Didn’t know whether he was coming or going. I asked him why wanted rid of it, what was the reason for the sale and all that, and I don't think he even knew himself.'

I forced a puzzled expression.

'Yeah I know what you're thinking mate,' (I sincerely hoped not), 'I thought something was a bit dodgy myself, but he had all the papers and that. I'll get the AA to check it out of course, can't be too careful, but it looks sweet enough.'

'So you've bought it then?' I asked in disbelief.

'Gave him five hundred quid for a deposit,' replied Jason, 'soon as the paperwork sorted it's mine. I got a mate that's interested in my Fiesta, and I should be able to do him a good deal, what with the price I'm getting on the Golf. Hopefully be all sorted by the weekend.’

Sure enough when I came into work the following Monday, there was a blue Golf GTI in the office car park which I had never before seen. A huge sticker of a car HiFi manufacturer's logo stretched across the rear windscreen, confirming this car as Jason's, or in a certain way of thinking, mine. This was the car that I invented, manufactured not on some automated assembly line in Germany, but in my imagination. I had to touch it, to be sure it was there. I walked cautiously round the driver’s side and peered inisde. Everything looked as it should be. There was a typically Jasonish chrome knob on the gear stick, and a sporty steering wheel cover. Peering under the steering column I could see that the pedals too were chrome, and drilled with holes, presumably to look like those on racing cars. I placed my hand against the cool glass of the driver’s door window and pushed gently, feeling its smooth solidity. It was real alright. I pressed a little firmer, frustrated now, maddened by the impossibility of it all. I pushed and then,

SCREE! SCREE! SCREE! Oh my God, I’d set the bloody alarm off! SCREE! SCREE! SCREE! All the car’s exterior lights were blinking in unison with that awful noise. SCREE! SCREE! SCREE! An elderly couple on the pavement alongside the edge of the car park were looking in my direction. SCREE! SCREE! SCREE! Oh please stop it now! SCREE! SCREE! SCREE!

BLIP. It stopped. Quiet for a second. Then from above an angry voice.

‘Oi! Wanker!’

I looked upwards, losing my balance and falling back against the car parked behind me.

‘Look but don’t touch mate.’ It was Jason, grinning and chewing gum, leaning out of the office window. He dangled a set of keys and shook them teasingly, then pointed a fob at the car, making it blip again. ‘You want a ride you’ll have to wait till lunchtime.’ I smiled nervously and made my way indoors and upstairs to the office, cursing all the way.

I had to endure a good day’s taunting from Jason, as I’m sure you can imagine. In fact I was only able to bring a halt to his seemingly incessant braying by accepting his offer of a ‘burn’ in his new car. For this pleasure I sacrificed my lunch break, and though I was naturally unimpressed by Jason’s smoking wheel spins and mastery of the traffic light showdown, I could not help but take some satisfaction in my achievements, even if the outcome of my mischievousness was not at all what I had expected. In fact it was during my ride in this ostensibly non-existent car that I resolved to further explore the possibilities of speculative advertising (as I had now dubbed it). I mean the only person to benefit from this bizarre chain of events thus far had been Jason, and that was no proper way to leave things at all.

And so it was that the next afternoon I placed an advert for a laptop computer, something I’ve wanted for quite a while. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say it was of a more than adequate specification at a more than reasonable price. This time I guessed at a landline number. I was tempted of course to ring immediately, before publication, but I resisted. After all what would I say to the owner? Hello, I’m interested in the laptop computer that’s advertised in tomorrow’s paper? No that wouldn’t do. I had to maintain the illusion of normality. If the resultant effect of speculative advertising was some kind of coercive force visiting itself upon unsuspecting vendors to be, then surely I should do nothing to disrupt that gentle encouragement? On the other hand perhaps nothing of the sort was happening. Perhaps the sellers were as fictitious as the adverts themselves. Perhaps after the sale they simply ceased to be.

I wondered whether the phone number I had used for Jason’s advert was still in use, and if the previous owner would answer. Later that day whilst Jason was using the toilet, an act he would always describe to us in great detail upon his return, I called it. A man’s voice answered. I asked about the Golf GTI. It was gone, he said, sold last week. I thanked him and hung up. So the second option could be ruled out. The goods existed and so therefore did the seller. A third hypothesis came to me – what if the entire thing was an act of outrageous coincidence? The success or failure of my second speculative advertisement would determine that, and so I decided to think nothing more of it until the morning and first press.

Morning, dialling, ringing. A woman’s voice. Another voice reading my script, but noticeably uncertain, confused even.

‘Laptop? Oh yeah, well that’s my husband’s. He’d mentioned something about selling it. He’ll be back this evening, around six.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘Hmm yeah let me give you the address, best to speak to him about it later.’

I scrawled the address on a bus ticket, and sat impatiently in the office, awaiting the day’s first calls. They were slow in coming and the day dragged interminably. I had great difficulty in concentrating, all I could think about was the potential powers of speculative advertising. If this experiment was a success then the opportunities were endless. My only immediate concern was that the advert was currently in the public domain, and I may not be the only respondent. What if others called in, out bid me, submitted more realistic tenders? Perhaps market dynamics would overpower the mystical coercion of speculative advertising. This had not been the case with Justin’s car, but he had acted swiftly and met the seller as soon as was possible. Furthermore although his car was certainly a bargain, the price had been good but not suspiciously so.

I took a minicab to the address of the laptop owners, arriving there just (but only just) after six. It was a large semi in a leafy avenue, exactly the sort of place that a professional couple with a surplus of computing equipment would live. Their drive contained a brand new silver Volkswagen Golf. I smiled at the coincidence, but this was no Jason-mobile. This was a family car, no spoilers or lowered suspension, the only fitted options a baby seat and cup holders. I gave the car a wide berth, accustomed as I now was to the sensitivity of alarm systems, and made my way to the front door. I rang the doorbell, and almost immediately I could make out signs of movement behind the frosted glass. The door swung open to reveal a man in his early thirties, dressed in the modern day smart-casual uniform of beige khakis and a red woollen sweater. His frameless glasses helped maintain an aspect of youthfulness, but beyond the oval lenses his eyes betrayed the tiredness of a recent father.

‘You must be here about the laptop then?’ he said smiling, and ushering me inside. ‘Darling, the man’s here about the computer!’ he called out. ‘I’m just going to take him upstairs so he can have a look at it.’ A muffled ‘Okay dear’ was returned from further within the house. I followed him up stripped wooden stairs and past a young child’s bedroom to an Ikea catalogue office. Next to the ubiquitous putty grey PC (is there a name for that colour? Inteldigo?) sat a similarly familiar looking black laptop, powered up with a screensaver running. He shook the mouse and the images were dispelled.

‘So why are you selling?’ I asked, following a breif demonstration.

‘Oh well you know…’ he began. He looked a little uncertain, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes, but then answered suddenly. ‘With the little one and all that,’ he motioned towards the child’s room, ‘I guess I’m not away so much. I do most of my work on the desktop.’ He grinned at me, ‘and if you thought keeping your PC up to spec was an expensive business, try having a kid!’ I smiled in understanding, considering his response. He certainly appeared to have a genuine reason for selling, but at the same time seemed blissfully unaware that I had placed that advertisement, that I had arranged this sale. ‘So whaddya think?’ he asked. ‘You always know where we are if there’s any problems, not that there will be mind.’ I agreed to take it. At the price I’d specified I’d be a fool not to. I paid in cash, for which he wrote me a receipt, and as I left with new laptop in hand I asked him if there had been any other callers. There had not.

I wasn’t sure what this implied. There could of course be subsequent callers, of which I would know nothing. Apart from accommodation which always went quickly, particularly in September when the students returned, most adverts did not begin to receive replies until well in to the evening of publication, and often not until the next day. I could only presume that there would have been other interested parties in both Jason’s car and my laptop.

It was with my newly acquired laptop that I formulated most of the speculative advertisements which I was to place over the coming months. I would test them out at home you see, type them into the laptop’s word-processing software and then read them back from the printout, assessing their plausibility. This I was able to do as a new printer had been second on my speculative shopping list, just after the laptop. The recently bust home business who were disposing of said printer seemed grateful for the sale, as did the divorced middle manager who in order to meet his CSA demands divested himself of his wide screen television, likewise the elderly Jamaican gent who suddenly found himself with no need for his extensive collection of ska and dancehall originals. None seemed in any doubt of their desire to rid themselves of these items, yet none were troubled when I called in regard to an advertisement which they had never placed. I still couldn’t understand the workings of the process in which I was increasingly enmeshing myself, but understanding became less and less important to me as I reaped the benefits and grew increasingly comfortable with the practise of speculative advertising.

I stuck to home electronics and leisure goods at first. A new HiFi was followed by countless CD and vinyl purchases. Of course much of this was luck, I couldn’t very well print a list of all the records or films I wished to own in the paper, but by scooping the professional collectors to the clearouts of personal collections (which I had of course instigated) I was able to pick up quite a few bargains. The wide screen TV was soon matched with a surround sound system, the laptop partnered by a games console. All at fantastical prices. I even treated my parents to advance notice on the sale of a nearly new three piece suite, much the same as the one they had asterisked in the glossy catalogue that lay open on the living room coffee table. They were most pleased, and attention was thankfully diverted from the growing mass of expensive electrical devices that were threatening to engulf my room, like some kind of model science fiction cityscape, the only source of light an array of blinking LEDs scattered amongst the modular walls of black and grey moulded plastic.

There were however limits to the powers of speculative advertising, which I soon discovered. An attempt to acquire a treadmill (all my recently acquired technological distractions were doing nothing for my figure) proved unsuccessful when I deliberately suggested the quite improbable price of ten pounds. Upon calling the vendor laughed and assured me that a zero must be missing. Still at one hundred pounds for a barely used piece of equipment that retailed at seven or eight times that figure, the price was more than generous. I passed up on that opportunity, and no doubt some other classifieds reader was now unknowingly benefiting from my mischievousness. From then on I stuck to plausible, if quite unfair prices in my advertisements. Likewise I found that blatantly non-existent items could not be solicited; when I called in regard to the advert I had placed for a surface to air missile launcher the recipient of the call was at first bemused, and upon further questioning turned quite belligerent. Likewise my follow up call to an ad placed for an ‘Air Guitar, with strap’ was met with predictably adolescent giggling.

I soon grew tired of the simple acquisition of goods at knock-down prices for purely personal use. I had established myself a nice little sideline in collecting the bargains I had arranged for in my advertisements and then selling them to the second hand shops on Markleigh Road for a modest profit. Sure they asked questions after I’d brought in my third high-end camera that month, but I just told them the truth, or at least a close approximation of it. I had a friend at one of the free-sheets I’d say, he tips me off the night before the best deals get published. I get there first thing in the morning and snap them up quick. Now some of the dealers didn’t take too kindly to this, saw it as muscling in on their game. Fine I could take my business elsewhere, and as for any suggestion of impropriety then if they wanted to get the police involved that was their prerogative. They didn’t, and my speculative advertising expertise allowed us to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship.

Despite developing speculative advertising from an enjoyable little perk into a second revenue source, I was still unsatisfied, and grew increasingly convinced that there was further potential in the pages of the classified ads. I had to look beyond Goods for Sale, past even Property and Motors, beyond the trade in mere things and into the business of human communication. I decided therefore to seek fulfilment through the Lonely Hearts ads. Now I’d never used this kind of service before, wary of the stigma attached to such things. I mean these blind date lotteries were for the socially inept, the untouchable castes surely? Not so if I could determine the kind of person who planted their flag in the unclaimed ground of awkward silences and unbearable dinner dates. What if amongst the ‘cuddly’ single mums and the ‘young’ sixty-something ramblers there was someone perfect, someone who would fit my description of an ideal mate? There would still be a huge element of luck for sure, what with the concise nature of these advertisements, but it was certainly worth a try, if only for the purposes of research. And so, on another quiet afternoon, I typed into the system:

Attr F 25, Graduate, seeks sim M with GSOH for r/ship. Likes pints, Pinter. Dislikes work, working.

I was especially proud of the ‘pints, Pinter’ bit, but then again I would be. The ‘work, working’ part was not so good, not so clever, but then again it was my first attempt at this, and so also therefore her's. Both parties were bound to be somewhat nervous, their overtures stumbling.

After publication I immediately left a message on her voicemail number. There was no personalised introduction, but that was true of many who placed ads with our service. After taking the first step of actually placing an ad, it was often some time, and following several unsuccessful dates as I understood it, that users began to take advantage of the service’s more advanced features. The first I heard from her came in the form of an email, she having chosen the most removed and impersonal form of contact from the options I had left with her. Only natural I supposed, I would probably have done the same thing myself. She had suggested we meet at a pub I knew, a studenty place most of the year but relaxed in the summer months.

The date was no success, but it was no disaster either. I’m not going to go into details here and now, but suffice to say that Sara and I failed to ‘connect’. Although I met her every joke with a genuine laugh, countered her every opinion with one of my own – different enough so as not to sound obsequious, similar enough so as not to provoke bitter argument, she seemed inexplicably distant throughout. She spoke once, briefly, of a former relationship which had ended in acrimony, hinting that this may have been the impetus for her placing her advertisement. I knew otherwise however, that she had in fact placed no such advertisement, and though it pained me to remain silent I did so, knowing that any attempt to explain the true nature of events would prove most discomforting for her. Indeed it was this impasse in our dialogue that led to the evening dissolving into the familiar mix of obligatory pleasantries and uncomfortable dating standards. We parted with a handshake and a tacit understanding that our first date was also to be our last.

Things were growing increasingly complex. Whilst my first incursion into speculative personal ads had not been a complete success, it had nevertheless served as a promising example of the practice's potential. It also raised a whole host of moral quandaries and ethical considerations which I did my very best to ignore. In fact my mind was already occupied with far more ambitious applications. After all if speculative advertising could exert such a compelling force upon its readers, then what of speculative news items? Would people really believe anything they read in the papers? Maybe the long suspected collusion of media owners, constructing their own news agendas and so on, was not so much based upon tired old ideas of capitalist imperatives and western cultural hegemony, but an altogether more sinister force, something supernatural. A something that I had stumbled upon, though whether by accident or design was anyone's guess.

These were serious matters, and frankly they made my head hurt. I was getting way ahead of myself here, or at least I rationalised it as such. Besides there was a more immediate concern to be deal with, a concern that manifested itself in the form of an office memorandum which arrived on my desk one Tuesday morning. Addressed to 'All Classified Sales Staff', all four of us that is, it bore a simple edict: Annual personnel reviews were to take place that Friday, mine specifically from eleven until half past. I foresaw two possible scenarios, the first of which being that the review was some kind of initiation ritual, where my suspicions of public mind control wrought by newspaper magi would be confirmed and my rapid mastery of speculative advertising awarded with introduction to other more powerful and arcane aspects of provincial journalism. The second and rather more likely scenario was that I would be exposed as the workshy chancer that I was, with awkward questions asked about my liberal use of complimentary advertising slots.

I looked to my colleagues. Each had received the memo, yet all three were working as normal, unfazed by the possible implications. It occurred to me that I had thus far presumed that only I was aware of the power contained within the classifieds pages. Nichola and Saima though, I hardly knew a thing about either one of them. Saima was an almost entirely silent presence, Nichola more vocal but similarly insubstantial. Maybe they too were playing their cards close to their chests. They had after all been with the newspaper far longer than I, and had been given plenty of opportunity to make the same discoveries. I was sure that Jason knew nothing, as he told anyone who would listen everything else about his life, but the others, the others were unknowns. I could presume nothing as far as they were concerned. I solicited opinions on the impending reviews; Jason was as ever first to offer his, 'a load of bollocks mate.' Saima was a little more reserved, but little more enlightening; 's'nothin' to worry about Simon, jus' answer the questions innit.' Nichola however confirmed my suspicions, speaking matter of factly, keeping her eyes fixed on her screen, tapping away at the keyboard with one hand, with a genuine air of indifference that accentuated my increasingly uncalm demeanour.

'The paper's going through a bit of a tough time at the moment Simon. Sales are down on last year and they're looking at going into the red for the first time since ages. They're looking to cut a few staff here and there to, you know, reduce costs and that.'

My façade crumbled, and Nichola glancing up from her monitor for the first time saw it. 'I wouldn’t worry about it,' she said with a smile spreading across her face, 'we're a small department. They aren’t going to cut anyone here, not unless they're doing something really naughty.' She was giggling now. 'I guess we're all in a bit of trouble then. P45s at the ready guys!' she cried out to no-one in particular.

I was in trouble, regardless of what Nichola said. They were looking to get rid of people, and I was just the sort of person that they'd love to ditch. I'd been there for much less time than the others, cutting me out would be far less traumatic. I would probably get the spiel about being overqualified for this sort of thing anyway, and that I was best placed to find employment at a higher level, perhaps in London, on the nationals. Jason was an oaf, but he was popular and like the girls had length of service over me. He was pally with the other departments, would talk football with the admin guys whenever they dropped by, gave the girls rides home in his shiny new car. No, if they were to drop anyone, they would drop me and everything that I had discovered here would be lost to me forever. I had barely begun to explore the possibilities too! There was so much more I could do with Goods For Sale or Lonely Hearts and all the other sections that I had as yet not touched. I needed to find out so much more about speculative advertising. And what of the rest of the newspaper? What else would I never know?

There was no way I could surrender my position and my privilege. I had to guarantee the security of my employment. I would of course accept pay cuts and longer hours without hesitation. I would happily wave my rights and double my workload. I would be first to arrive and last to leave. I would accept all of these conditions if they were to be suggested by management, and if not then I would suggest them myself. But they alone would not be enough. I had to work under the assumption that any such measures would be imposed upon and accepted by the entire group. Though there would be the customary moaning, I would still be the one voted least likely to succeed. I therefore had to divert attention away from myself, and on to another. I would have to be underhand and deceitful. I would have to lie and cheat, and do whatever it took to ensure my continued employment, even if that had to be at the expense of another's.

Trouble was that being underhand and deceitful, scheming and plotting and so on, is not for the inexperienced. My prospective solutions were pathetic and doomed to failure. Any treachery would have to be perfect in both its planning and execution, failure would only discredit me further and hasten the termination of my employment. The next few days were unbearable. Each night I tried and tried to formulate plans that would lead to the dismissal of one of my peers, preferably Jason. I couldn’t do it though, each idea seeming even more likely to fail than the last, termination of my employment increasingly certain. I withdrew into my room, suspended external relations, stopped eating and stayed up all night scrawling plans in notebooks then crossing them out with increasing frustration. Work was uncomfortable to say the least, and to make maters worse my preoccupation with Friday's review led to an even higher incidence of typos and fuck ups than usual. Though they said nothing, I'm sure the others noticed. Jason, who perhaps now mindful of his own vulnerability, transformed himself into a model worker. He spoke only to customers, and did so with good manners and even better salesmanship. My position had further weakened, almost to the point of irrelevance. I was now more than ever the prime candidate for any cost cutting measures and with Friday morning almost upon me I had all but resigned myself to a heartbreaking loss.

And then at the last moment, it all became clear. It was Friday morning and the personnel reviews had begun. Saima had been in first, for twenty minutes or so. She returned to her seat and resumed work without saying a word. I looked to Nichola, and then to Jason, but no-one intimated a response. At eleven Jason put down his headset, stood up and with a 'right then' left his desk and made his way to the stairs, heading up to the third floor and Human Resources. It was whilst Jason was in his meeting that this epiphany occurred, that I realised the answer had been literally staring me right in the face. It was there in front of me that day, as it had been every day, rendered in glowing pixels and cheap newsprint. The answer was in the ads. Within the classifieds pages lay my salvation and my reward. Had this been some kind of test I wondered? Had this been an unannounced exercise to determine who was to stay and who was to go? Whatever. I began typing.

Just fifteen minutes later Jason bounded through the double doors from the stairwell and into the office. He cocked an eye in my direction, made a clicking sound with his tongue, then grinned and winked simultaneously. I returned the gesture with a wide smile of my own, content in the knowledge that my position was secure, my special privilege assured, and Jason's confidence misplaced. Now what had occurred to me, but obviously not to Jason, was that our remit went way beyond maintaining mere lists of goods for sale. Beyond even the uniting of mismatched singletons, or the re-uniting of old colleagues and comrades. No we had certain civic responsibilities as well, responsibilities which allowed me to ensure that though there would be one less employee in this office next Monday, that unlucky soul would not be yours truly. Take a look in the classified pages of your local rag and you'll see what I'm talking about. Just there on the page before Motors. Public notices, that's right, we take care of those too; births, marriages. And deaths.