You dont take sugar do you shouted his secretary not so much asking a question as stating a fact  as well she might because she had been making Lancelot cups of coffee for many months Her excuse for forgetting such things was that he wasnt normally supposed to be there Actually nowadays he was usually there all the time having discovered that to take up his proprietorial privilege of staying away was tantamount to opening the floodgates Not for the first time he pondered the easy imperceptibly divided stages by which he had progressed from valued counsellor meeting authors and playwrights over lunch at carefully planned planning meetings complete with agenda to hapless dogsbody moving one step ahead of catastrophe with nowhere to park when he arrived at work in the mornings