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Is it step up or step down? I’m never exactly sure. Either case, this has been the state of affairs for years now. Stepping into the breach left behind by vacant posts, longterm sickness, substandard management and a significant skills deficit.

Today, I asked to be relieved of admin duties that have been plonked on top of my existing duties, which in turn have been plonked on top of my actual duties. The response? Yes, they’d like to get to that point, but we’ve had to work differently due to staff absences.

That differently, of course, has been the norm for years now. Indeed, for as long as I have worked in this sector — approaching twenty years — the spectre of cost-savings has hung over me, dangled before me like a threat. After all, I was the survivor when our dev team was dismembered a decade ago.

I have heard many promises over the years since then. Directors speaking of the need to invest in a proper team. Managers talking about the importance of what I do. Talking heads saying that for an organisation of such a size serving such a large population, they recognise that the service is severely underfunded.

But in the end it is all just talk, for here we are, plodding on with the same old same old. The trouble with you, laugh colleagues who know me too well, is that you’re just too reliable. They’re not going to fund that extra post while they already have one person doing the work of a team.

Perhaps if I didn’t have a sense of duty, I’d choose being less reliable in the hope it would give me leverage. That’s how cyber security got themselves taken seriously after all, riding high on the fallout of mammoth public sector data breaches, disaster forever the harbinger of utopia.

So here we are, stepping up (or down) again, practising that most sought after skill of all: unstinting patience with the state of affairs. Just a little longer, they say now. Yeah, well, I’ll believe it when I see it. For my part, I’ve decided to focus squarely on my own work from here on, and disengage from above and beyond.