* takes public transport to the department because a car is an unaffordable luxury and his garret is not suitable for homeworking
* it's not the usual guy at Greggs, but some miserable shrew who only gives him one stamp towards his next free coffee
* arrives in his office, a low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered office tables and a duo of unkempt chair,
* finds that the administration have deemed summer to have arrived and turned off the central heating (9 degrees C outside)
* sits down shivering by his single glazed, poorly insulated, early 20th century window
* the chocolate chip cookie is hard and likely not baked today. had it always been like this?
* in his stomach and skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that he had been cheated of something that he had a right to