Poetic Licence: The Prisoner of the Electronic Cottage
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Your support makes all the difference.THERE ARE now 1.3 million people in the UK working full time or part time from home. This figure is expected to rise to three million by the year 2004. Health professionals, however, believe that teleworkers are prone to a range of psychiatric illnesses because of the isolation of home working
The Prisoner of the Electronic Cottage
Last night I dreamt of briefcases, umbrellas
In faded files of office lives I had
Yeah sure, I miss the Fridays and the flirting
But drinking after work was always sad.
To evening cavalcades of bushed commuters
Whose footsteps echo in the street below
The prisoner of the electronic cottage
In silence mouths: "Hello."
It's crazy, but I sometimes miss commuting
The open fields between the stations crossed
When dazzled by the oil-seed rape in springtime
Or woodlands in the winter with the frost.
The names of stations still return to haunt me
Like girlfriends from the past I never call
I, prisoner of the electronic cottage
Send greetings to you all.
But documents are faxed and claims submitted
The words sent down the wire to those outside
And abstracts become "products" in translation
My overtime and Lebensraum collide
As I commute from bedroom down to work space
The dress-down days drag on for weeks - or years
I, prisoner of the electronic cottage,
Am often bored to tears
And in the numbness of a midweek morning
Above the underwash of far-off cars
The birds of mental illness tap the window
But discipline is all, behind these bars
A strict routine, clean-shaven, no pyjamas
In working time, bodes well for my appeal
The sunlight, my solicitor, is hopeful
Perhaps we'll strike a deal.
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