"What you get is what you see. Like the birds and the bees, it should be easy to be free" : Lisa Stansfield
First day at work I pulled up outside the imposing glass building and parallel parked.
Note to myself: don't do that again. Dead give away.
I contemplated moving the car so that it took up three spaces instead of one to be more convincing, but decided against it.
The first week whizzed by. Mostly it was filled by introductions to people in the office and learning how to find my way around the building.
What I really needed though was a map showing how to navigate a new set of etiquette rules.
I held a door open for a man coming towards me and said "after you". He looked at me as if I was a Martian with six heads.
I tried to give someone a handshake. Another puzzled expression.
Same when I offered Paul in accounts advice on picking his fantasy football team.
Weird.
Didn't he know that Sergio Aguero was a better choice than Gabriel Agbonlahor?
Equally freaky was the fact that men were smiling at me. In a very nice, soft and almost dopey way.
As if they had been stabbed with a tranquilliser dart.
All this extra politeness was a bit unsettling. It would never happen as a bloke. I was more used to quick nod of the head on passing, and a gruff "alright?"
Meeting women had also changed overnight.
For instance. A guy would never ever look another man up and down, from head to toe, before speaking. Unless he wanted a punch in the face.
Women do it in a micro-second. Faster than a super computer. Evaluating, processing, filing. At first it felt a bit like meeting an army of robot body scanners, but I soon got used to it.
Actually, I started doing it myself.
Top from River Island. Seen that. Nice shoes! Not sure that skirt was the right choice.
"Oooh, you look lovely."
Going to the toilet was completely different too - and I don't mean in the obvious way.
Men would only very rarely exchange more than a few words in a lavatory. And only then on two conditions.
Those being that the person stood alongside staring laser-beam fashion at the wall was known to them. And that the subject being discussed was something strictly macho, such as football or drinking.
Some men also have a weird habit of adjusting their position at a urinal like a gunslinger, before firing a gob of spit in the trough. Or shooting at the disinfectant tablet.
Never really understood those two manoeuvres girls, so I can't offer any further insight.
The Ladies however is a completely different ball game.
For a start, it's cleaner and smells nicer.
We have privacy to do our business.
No pressure from standing shoulder to shoulder with a stranger with your trousers undone, going red in the face willing the waterworks to come on.
Individual cubicles are a massive perk of being a woman I greatly appreciate.
While the Gents is somewhere dedicated only to the matter in hand, the Ladies has multiple functions.
Lavatory, make-up counter, dressing area, conference centre, counselling office, confessional box, war room and bitch cupboard. To name but a few.
This, guys, is one of the reasons it takes us longer to re-emerge than you.
We are busy pee-ing - pampering, plotting and pouring out our souls.
Friday arrived.
I was still in one piece, and while nothing particularly interesting had happened, my first week had been a glorious, technicolor crash-course in life on the other side of the tracks.
However, the clock was ticking towards 4pm, and Cinderella's glass slippers were about turn into a Pumas.
Trainers that is. Not big cats.
Time to go home.
Changing gear - literally - at 60-miles-per-hour in a FIAT 500.
Houdini might have been able to free himself from a steel milk urn filled with water while handcuffed, but could he swap and shift dress and bra for football shirt and jeans in less than a minute while whizzing along the A69?
I think not.
Michael Grade, eat my dust.
