did you hear about the midnight rambler?

It’s amazing how much food you people eat when you are at work. You could also probably float a battleship on the amount of coffee you all drink too. Just look around you – if you can see around that bacon sandwich you’re inhaling – and surely even you must notice that people around here are always stuffing something into their fat faces as they work. Can even recall being in a meeting where no one is eating or drinking anything at all? I can’t say that I can. Can you? It’s funny though: everyone here is so busy eating that almost nobody notices somebody who doesn’t eat at all. Not a damn thing.

Actually, now I think about it, that’s probably why I’m so obsessed with everyone else’s eating habits. There’s nothing that sharpens my hunger more than by watching other people eat. Think of the Muslims in the office at Ramadan: they’re not allowed to eat at all between sun up and sun down. And you know what? For that one month of the year, every single damn one of them knows to the minute when the sun is due to set. Why? Because they’ve spent all day watching you fill their face and they just want to grab a bite. You must be able to imagine how they feel?

Yes? Well imagine that feeling every single day of every single month of every year. Well that, my friend... well, that’s my life.

It’s not that I don’t eat at all, obviously. That would be weird. Who doesn’t eat at all? How would that work? No. Obviously I have to eat. It’s just that I tend to eat in private. Trust me, no one would be able to see me eating what I have to eat and still want to stick to the meeting agenda.

Look, there’s no way of sugaring this pill. I wish there were. The fact is that I’m a vampire. I live on blood. Human blood. And I have to hold down a regular job if I want to pay my bills. Yeah. So you’ll forgive me if I eat in private.

I won’t lie to you: it’s not easy. You know how you get that little energy crash at around 3 o’clock in the afternoon? When you’re sat in an especially tedious meeting and you feel your eyes start to sag and your mind begins to drift? Well, I get that too. Unlike you, I can’t get up to get a cup of coffee and a bar of chocolate to see myself through to the end of the day. No. That doesn’t work for me at all. I have to wait until I get home. Just imagine for a moment how hard that must be: I’m sitting with two pulsing jugulars on either side of me. No matter how dull the meeting, how boring the presentation and how tired everyone is after their lunch, I can almost literally hear the sound of your blood pumping its way around your body. All I have to do to slake my thirst is to reach across, grab you by the throat and drink my fill. But I can’t do that. Of course I can’t do that. Standards are slack around here, I know…. But I’ve a feeling that even that might be a bridge too far and there may be consequences.

So I wait until the working day is over. Mostly I wait.