Concrete Pencil: Dreaming of change...or burgers?

I was once going to help sneak in a BBC camera crew secretly to film cleaners' conditions.

I did none of these things. Good sense, lack of money and old-fashioned cowardice got in the way.

So I didn't experience any of those things. Still, I know what it feels like not to do them, and who's to say that's any less valid an experience than actually, you know, doing them.

In fact, my friend and I once hatched a plan for me to hit him over the head at the fast-food restaurant where he worked and to make off with the takings. So I know how not doing that feels too (and I like that feeling unquestionably).

My one complaint is that these days the standard of things that I think I might do and then don't has dropped dramatically.

This week I thought I might go and get a burger from the Gourmet Burger Company, but I didn't because they are comparatively expensive and not the sort of lunch a person has on a Wednesday nowhere near payday.

Which reminds me, I often thought that this paper (which I used to edit, don't you know) should do a survey of where the fattest and the thinnest Wharfers eat.

If we revealed, say, that the average customer who takes their lunch at Eat is a few pounds lighter than one who favours Cafe Brera, then our figure-conscious readers could make an informed choice and lose a bit of weight.

For the record, I am what you would call generously proportioned and I favour Waitrose, M&S, Birleys and very occasionally Pret.

So now you know. But there again, that survey is something else I never did, back when the things I didn't do were a bit more interesting.

The most interesting thing that has happened to me in work this year is that I have become a fire marshal. And I realise that isn't very interesting. Although if someone is refusing to leave their workstation then our instructions are to "let 'em burn", which I quite like.

There are several of us marshals on the floor, and in a drill the first one to the red box by the lift gets to be in charge. I sit right by the lift (it's where they put the important people - as far away as possible from the editor's office).

Thankfully as yet there hasn't been a drill. But when there is one I'm going to have to find some way not to be the first to the red box.

Maybe I could pretend I didn't hear it and then when the other fire marshals turn up I would remember what I should be doing (yellow jacket: on; officious tone of voice; engaged).

Either way, I want being the lead fire marshal to be another thing I haven't done.

Dan Bourke is also lurking at blogs.mirror.co.uk/opposite-of-work