Benni

We all have our own ways of dealing with the stultifying boredom that is an inescapable part of the job of processing tax credit claims.
Greg stares trance-like at his keyboard for hours, lost in mucky thoughts and I wander off to check share prices. Benni, on the other hand, has taken to reading an English dictionary.
It all started when, for reasons that no one could understand, Greg was voted ‘Employee of the Month’. In recognition of this dubious distinction he was given a certificate and a rather fine leather bound English dictionary. Indeed, it was so fine that Benni immediately expressed his wish to become ‘Employee of the Month’ so that he too could be the proud possessor of such a volume. Recognising that Benni’s chances of reaching such dizzying heights of management approval were slim and being of a generous disposition, Greg offered his dictionary to Benni. Accepting with alacrity, Benni opened the precious tome at random and as luck would have it, the first word he came upon was ‘nincompoop’.
From that moment he was hooked. ‘Nin-com-poop’ he said over and over again, savouring the sound of each ludicrous syllable. The spell had taken hold and with each new word he became more and more entranced. He was intoxicated – high on the sights and sounds of strange new words. "Hey", he would shout across the table, "Do any of you lot know what ‘propinquity’ means or ‘jejune’ or ‘skulduggery’?" He would then delight in reading out the definitions to the rest of the office.
After a while his confidence grew and he started to try out these newly acquired words in sentences. On one occasion he leant over the desk and jabbed a finger in my direction. ‘You’re taciturn, man’ he said and ‘You’re insouciant’ I replied. His fingers flicked through the pages till he found it: "‘Insouciant’ – unconcerned: heedless". ‘Yes", I said, "laid back, chilled - man". I could tell he was pleased. Perhaps it was the thought that this seductively exotic sounding word described him so perfectly that it might have been invented for the purpose. It was now his word – Benni’s word, to slip into conversation wherever and whenever he chose.
I watched him as he sat back in his chair and resumed his search for more gems from that inexhaustible corpus which constitutes the English language; a picture of contentment and insouciance.