In the Jobscentre

So this is what it looks like from the inside. The local jobscentre, where I now find myself sat, legs and arms crossed in a self-contained embrace on a cold Monday morning. This is the kind of morning to inspire suicide; the sky outside is a water-surface reflection of the ennui surging within me, close to breaching the levees of my self-respect. If only every single Monday morning like this could be amassed together, swept up like a dropped deck of cards, if only it were possible to trade them in for something more appealing; a desperate haggle at the marketplace of time.

Indeed this must be one of the most depressing places I've ever found myself inside. It is a place of migraine-bright lights, un-ironed shirts, grainy coffee in styrofoam cups, and dog-eared posters tacked to walls advertising minimum wage hospitality jobs. The automatic doors give way to another lumbering layabout who slobs in, hands plumbing the depths of jeans pockets and scowling at the very presence of the day.

The jobless and the staff are separated by a discreet yet tangible barrier; those without jobs are shepherded to a central atrium of cheap furniture - a holding pen around which is wrapped a ring of staff desks. These desks are cluttered with a liberal array of bureaucratic paraphenalia, almost as if an attempt were being made to further highlight the gulf between those in the room.

The staff laugh with frugal economy at the occasional joke made by a colleague, the kind of mirthless banter exchanged to try and mask the crushing Monday morning depression that all are labouring under. All the while keeping their glances orbiting around the perimeter of the holding pen lest they should meet the gaze of someone languishing inside, thereby provoking some kind of dormant rage, the nature of which is most unwelcome on such a dismal morning. There's nothing like a random outburst of pent-up violence to irreparably ruin someone's day.

The jobless sit stubborn-faced on the sofas; stranded survivors on an island of their own circumstance, cut off from the rest of civilised society, able to view it through protracted lens but unable to play any meaningful or useful role in it. Each one works harder than is their want in order to avoid catching the eye of anyone else in the group, as though by ignoring all others the fact of their own presence in such a place can be allowed to slink by unacknowledged. Its easier to remain silent and aloof in such a place, or else you might begin to find an identity within it. No one here knows you outside of this environment, therefore - to them - you belong here, in the same sense that you associate them with this place and nowhere else. This is no place for making friends or seeking to inspire comradry. One man in his late-forties stares at the tips of his dirty shoes with the intensity of an aggressive drunk squaring up for a pub brawl. A young woman to my left appears edgy and agitated, hands shaking slightly as she grips her mobile phone in the grim hope that it might somehow teleport her into some other reality.

As I drift in and out of my own musings, I realise that the reason there appears to be such a division between the staff and jobless is because the holding pen is set into the floor by almost a couple of metres, like a swimming pool drained of all water. This had previously escaped my notice due to an ingenius lighting-and-mirror trick which no doubt councils up and down the country spent months and considerable funds in the pursuit of its inception.

As the staff begin to congregate around the rim of the shallow pit, a bell is sounded and the tension finally begin to ratchet to a head amongst those contained. Whilst before they would have sooner stabbed out their eyes with the pens held on desk-leashes than catch the gaze of another, now each man realises the situation that has been subtlely manufactured and the staring-down between them now begins, seeing the others as real opponents for the first time. The 5 or 6 captives, myself included, begin to shuffle around the fringes, our backs to the walls of the pit, our sense of self-preservation now unfurling around us like peacocks bearing their feathers.

The stand-off reaches an apex of intensity and suddenly one woman breaks out of her anxious side-step and lunges at the young girl to my side. Together they erupt in a fit of screaming, hair-pulling and scratching. Eager not to be entirely pre-empted by the women, the older man throws a punch at the bloke next to him wearing a grimy denim jacket. I have to wheel around to avoid the flailing wrecking-ball fists being swung by an overweight man in his late-30s, and quickly counter with a couple of darting jabs to his lower abdomen. With Fatty temporarily winded I skip around the two scrapping women and land an effective clothesline arm swipe to knock Denim to his knees.

The smell of sweat and blood mingles with the scent of grey synthetic carpet fibres scuffed up by the stamping feet of the staff. They have formed a collective braying audience, united with clenching fists and shouting encouragements. I almost expect them to break out with the classic playground chant of "Fight, fight, fight!", but they are too preoccupied with negotiating and closing hastily-made wagers between themselves.

I taste the bitter bile at the back of my throat as Fatty, returning strong and newly invigorated with violence, slams his brick wall of a forehead into the bridge of my nose, letting fly a jet stream of blood. Encouraged by the rising cheers from the sidelines, he hoists himself up out of the pit and prepares to launch himself off in an explosion of showboating panache and aggression. He leaps from his corner pulpit amidst the strip-light glare at the climax of a gathering storm of hand-claps...

"Mr Brooks please..."

I'm back in the black cloud of a Monday morning and rise, summoned from the holding pen. I cast a fleeting cursory glance around the sour faces of the others left sat there - society's detritus - and feel a surge of unjustified smugness. I'm not one of you, I don't belong here with you and this is last Monday morning that we will spend in each other's company. I approach the table of a staff member, who's facial expression hovers undecided between a smile and a grimace, and we sit down to business without shaking hands.