Top Bitch

Calling has its perks. People I'd never spoken to before come up and say, "I really like your bingo calling. When are you going to be full-time caller? You have such a clear/ sexy/ lovely voice." These snippets are not tossed lightly away.

Although we boldly go through life, expecting nothing and usually getting it - treating praise and criticism as the impostors they are - we are human, not a line in a Kipling poem. Status is good.

Although my old ladies are the backbone of the Bingo Club, men go there too. Working-class men, rough of speech and tattooed of skin. Until recently, one of their number was my secret bum-chum for several years, sitting there in front of me with his wife and daughters. Dominant. But now they go somewhere else, I think.

I used to be nervous of this sort of man - the racist, homophobic football-fan type, but now they talk to me. They come up and chat. And it's all because of the calling. We've mobiled, upwardly, if you can understand my use of upward.

John is my manager, and he's very dominant. A tall, dark, utterly handsome Highlander by extraction, he's both feared and fancied. And not just by the women.

Although in this employment only three months, we already have responsibility and junior colleagues. John likes to demonstrate his top-dog position, his better grasp of my new job than I have myself. (This is not the bingo-calling, this is another, separate, financial department.) I have to submit, in front of the new-starts. I can't compete, simply not as skilled as him. (Or as young, or as hunky, or as virile, or as anything, come to think of it.)

Except one thing. The thing you're reading just now. He asks for a few notes on my progress. I write him a page so packed with style that he gapes. He puts it in his own folder, for his own manager. It's dog eat dog. I can churn them out standing on my head, pages like that - a never-ending supply of my own particular King of the Hill-ness.

I've criticised to his face his overbearing style. He says he's just winding me up. Three months ago I was the new boy - the fat old queen making her shaky way in a crowd of foul-mouthed knife-in-the-backs. (That's just some of the staff... others are a delight.) Last night came the ultimate accolade.

"Magnificat!" he shouts, as I pass his office door. I enter. He brings out the fags. (cigarettes). We smoke and chat, him behind his manager's desk, and me sitting across from him, friendly, joking and familiar. Oh - he pretends to talk about business, but in reality the gesture is quite different. It's to show me in his office, in a collaborative way, IN FULL VIEW OF PASSING COLLEAGUES.

Calling has its perks.