P.P.N-D.M-N.B.D.

The manager looked at the sick/fit note for perhaps the sixth or seventh time and still he thought he was seeing things. A shiver of terror ran through him: Early-stage Dementia! Maybe it had started? Maybe this was the way it began: reading words that are not there.

'Pre/post/no-deal/maybe-not Brexit Depression' then, in brackets '(P.P.N-D.M-N.B.D.)'.

He looked up at the face of Charles McGinty: this McGinty who was suffering from this strange malaise.

"This a joke, Charles?"

McGinty's face took on a measure of shock. He'd been off for two weeks and this was his 'welcome back' interview and he was being accused by Billy Morgan, his manager of 6 years in this paper pulping plant of basically falsifying a doctor's script-pad.

"Naw Mr Morgan. Doc says that's what ahv goat. Shouldnae be back really, still feeling dodgy"

“So, you’ve got this….” and here Billy Morgan had to look back at the script “this Pre/post/no-deal/maybe-not Brexit Depression?”

“Aye”

“And what’s the score with this…how does this manifest itself?”

“Well edgy, man. Really, really edgy”

“Edgy?”

“Aye, but really edgy” Charles McGinty emphasised the word really as if to illustrate something alien that had crawled into his underwear and started tickling his balls.

“And a doctor diagnosed this?”

“Worst case he’d seen, he said”

“So there are others?”

“Christ aye! There’s an epidemic. Huv ye no’ heard?”

Billy Morgan gazed out of his office window. There were children playing in a play-park, birds chirruped in the trees. On the horizon the sun faded on the late October day.

There was a queue outside his door.