My Work Experience Diary – Ellen Carson Part One

12th October

I was ill yesterday so was late for applying for work experience. The police one is gone. John got it. I'm stuck with the boring tourist office instead because there's nowhere else left. Abby's helping with a play at the theatre, Jemima's snuck her way into a post at Debenhams, and I'm stuck handing out flyers and pointing out the way to the castle for a week.

13th October

Aiden's said he was at the tourist office. Thought that was good, since I quite like him, but then he said there was only one place there. Turns out there's another tourist office that I'd never heard of by the Plas, and I'm stuck there instead. And if I haven't heard of it what are the chances that a tourist is going to have heard of it? Boring boring boring boring boring….

1st November

….Boring boring boring. It starts tomorrow. Yay. Least that means no school. And if there's no tourists I can go home early. I spent an hour last night looking up tourist destinations in Cardiff, on the vague off-chance someone actually shows up.

2nd November 11am

No one has turned up yet. Glad I brought this and a detective novel with me. There's not really much to do, certainly not for two of us. I don't know what the man here does all day normally.

The man running the place is quite nice. Or I think he seems nice. He's a bit odd. Here is a full description, to help pass the time, since I've reorganised all the brochures twice already and put all the out-of-date ones in a pile. It's a pretty big pile.

He's called Ianto Jones, fairly young (no good with ages), Welsh, wears a very neat suit. Immaculate. Very polite, and very tidy. My mum would say he was OCD, but I think if he was the office would be as smart as he is. If I was any good at actually detecting things I would have worked out more about him than that. Like how many kids he has. I don't think he has kids. He doesn't have a wedding ring, and there aren't any photos of family or anything. There aren't any photos at all.

He's not here now anyway. He's gone to 'sort something out' and says he'll bring coffee when he gets back. Oh, he's back.

2nd November 11.40am

The coffee is very good. Far better than Starbucks normally does. Maybe he knows how to chat up the waitress or something. Maybe he has a secret coffee machine hidden somewhere and he used that instead and then pretended to take ages so he could fool me and bunk off work, only there isn't any. Maybe I'm bored again.

He gave me some tourist figures to sort out, but

2nd November 1.10pm

Sorry, I stopped because I ACTUALLY HAD A TOURIST! Yes! A real tourist. They were Japanese though. I think. Or maybe Chinese. Sometimes I can't tell the difference. Anyway, they came in and asked me something in Chinese/Japanese, and I told them I didn't understand, and then we had this very strange conversation because she didn't seem to speak English properly. I was trying not to laugh, but she was pointing at the map and saying all the names really weirdly. Like Splott. How can you mispronounce Splott? Splott. She said it like Sploe, or something. And why would anyone want to visit Splott anyway?

Another weird thing is that it was just her. Normally Japanese/Chinese tourists travel in packs. Maybe she got separated? Anyway, I gave her directions and drew all over her map (with correct pronunciations) and sent her off to Splott. I hope she survives. It was quite nice to have someone to talk to.

2nd November 3.20pm

We had some more tourists when Mr Jones got back. They were an American couple, and then an English family who didn't stay long. He dealt with them mostly. He was away for ages before that, but he did bring back coffee, which made it worth it. And there's not really room in here for two. Suspiciously, he came back wearing a different suit. Perhaps the tourist office is really a front for a drugs operation? (I don't know why I came up with that, it's just that changing a suit for no apparent reason seems suspicious. Like you're covering up bloodstains or something.) But I can't see why that would mean he had to change his suit. Maybe he spilt coffee on the old one and his sense of pristine cleanliness meant he had to change his entire outfit. I should stop being mean about him. He's really nice, even if he's not here most of the time, and at least I'm not going to spend the entire week learning how to make tea like everyone else in my year.

3rd November 10am

I got sent home early last night. Not much else happened. When I arrived today Mr Jones suggested that I write some reviews for some tourist attractions, then he took an 'urgent' phone-call and left.

I'm not going to write a review of the tourist attractions just yet. Instead I'm going to write a review of this office.

It's small and neat, but quite shabby. I like the little bead curtain. And it's clean, but it doesn't feel particularly used. Possibly because normally it's never open, if Mr Jones normally spends this much time away. We really ought to put a notice up redirecting people to the other tourist office.

The drawers are full of stationary supplies. I checked. And there's a note reading 'do not steal'. Who would steal stationary supplies? And why does he even need so many? I can't quite envisage an illegal trade in surplus stationary, so maybe he just hates running out. There's also a locked drawer I can't find the key to.

I ordered some new brochures, since most of these are out of date. One of the attractions advertised has even closed down. This is highly suspicious. I'm not sure of what yet. Probably nothing, but it's more fun to think that instead of just shuffling leaflets I might uncover a massive Cardiff crime syndicate, hidden behind this tiny fake office. I'm going to go and tap on all the walls to look for secret doors.

3rd November 12pm

While I was tapping on the walls (I'm going to recheck the one with the brochure rack on later – it echoes a bit) a woman walked in. She spoke English this time, which was good, and said she was from Swansea, visiting for a few days. So we chatted about Cardiff and its history and I found her the Millennium Stadium on a map (she said that she'd lost her boyfriend there while she was shopping, and now she needed to go and find him again). She said work experience was a great idea, but that whoever was supposed to be supervising me really shouldn't leave me on my own so much. But if someone else is here then I can't snoop around.

3rd November 12pm

There's a camera! I can't believe I didn't notice there was a camera! How blind am I? If this is some sort of cover operation they could have been spying on me all along, and they'll know that I've been rummaging in the drawers and knocking on all the walls! Or maybe it's just so that they have footage in case of abuse against staff members or something boring. But it's much more exciting to assume otherwise.

3rd November 6pm

Ok, nothing else happened for the entire afternoon, apart from two things.

- The panelling does sound hollow. It's weird. But I don't know what you do after you've found a secret door. Presumably you look for the secret lever, but I can't find one.

- When I left I hung round to get a pizza and I thought I saw Mr Jones chatting to a man over by the railings. I didn't get a good look, but my (probably non-existent) detective's intuition tells me that they're together. So maybe that's where he's sneaking off to! Mystery solved!

I'm going to try and do a joint work experience tomorrow – tourist office employee (not that I'm getting paid) and private detective! I know which one I'd rather be. And maybe I'll even get some tourists to help out while I'm at it.