I work in quite a nice building. It's a big corporate affair over in West London, with a six-storey atrium inside the entrance, a sunny receptionist on the desk, and a nice, spacious waiting area for visitors.

However, it's miles from where I live. So much so that I usually spend three hours a day commuting back and forth.

So when an opportunity came up recently to do the same gig locally and cut my daily commute by two and a half hours, I figured I'd jump at the chance. Until I visited the office this evening to get a feel for my potential new environs and realised I'd be crossing the tracks into the wrong side of town every day...

Cos the new office isn't a nice, corporate building with a giant atrium. It doesn't have a sunny receptionist. It doesn't even look to have a reception. It's just some dumpy looking office in the middle of a dumpy looking housing estate.

As the sun set behind the buildings and boy racers boomed by in souped up motors with cranked up stereos, I got out of the car and approached it apprehensively. The office looked like it had smoked forty fags a day for forty years. It looked like a place that couldn't recall a time when it didn't have stained fingers and rotten teeth. I paused to look at the placards in the window which, inexplicably, seemed to be advertising cheap places to live.

In the distance, a disembodied voice said, 'Nothing but shit there.' I only realised the voice was directed at me when I heard it again. 'Nothing but shit there.'

I turned to face my Dutch uncle. It was the King of the Chavs, a man in a baseball cap and an ill-fitting vest who had broken away from his scraggy missus to engage me.

I didn't know what to say. He thought I was like him. For want of offending him, I pulled a pained, regretful expression and said, 'Yeah... not a lot... here...'

He took this as a cue to delve further. 'What you got then? One-bedroom flat?'

'Yeah...' I said, 'Pretty much... something like that...' I couldn't believe it. I was getting drawn deeper into a conversation where I was pretending to be a bum.

'So whereabouts you living now?'
'Oh... a mile or two away...' I gestured vaguely. 'Down the way...'
'Yeah, whereabouts?'
I began to feel, for the first time in my life, exceedingly well-spoken.
'Off the main road, there...' Another vague gesture.

We stood facing each other, in silence.

'Okay then,' I finally broke, 'I'm going to get off...'

We bid each other farewell and he returned to his missus while I awkwardly walked across to my suddenly fancy-looking Mercedes. I considered walking straight past and catching a bus but thought better of it and quietly climbed in. I'm not sure whether he clocked me but he must've realised I'd been talking bullshit when I started the engine, Classic FM sprang noisily to life, and I set off for my bedsit.

Anyway, I'll be buying a portable DVD player for the commute.