A FAIR DAY'S PAY

My cheeks went red. I swallowed hard. I plucked up courage, puffed out my pigeon chest and strode over to the convenor with clear intent. I'd blurt it out unapologetically. I'd categorically refuse to take a pay rise.

There was however, a however. The Autonomous Workers' Council wouldn't hear of such a thing.

- The very idea! A comrade in a unionised, collectivised job denying themself what they're entitled to, argued Eileen O'Connor, the convenor, a 45-year-old closed market gardener with greying hair and rainbow coloured sweaters who nibbled no-sugar-added chocolate and read Kropotkin in her spare time. She smiled at me kindly. I felt like a six year-old-boy rather than a 28-year-old business graduate and entrepreneur.

- Since the revolution I've had 47 increments and 154 extra days' unpaid leave, I pointed out.

- Oh I get it. All that money and spare time is making your life hell.

- There's nothing to invest it in any more, is there?. You've abolished the Stock Market. I used to love a hedge fund I did. It's not as if I can punt it on the gee gees or even go lap dancing!

- Then send it overseas. There're loads of good causes in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia. You can double the 10% we already take directly from your Workers’ Co-Op account.

- Sure. Do it. But it still doesn't feel right. Getting the same as doctors do for going round with the Ecocover a couple of hours a day.

- Don't knock it. Cleaning toilets keeps them busy.

- Now you've converted all the golf courses into allotments.

- I think you're stereotyping now Felipe. And anyway, public hygiene's as important for our collective health and well-being as medical care, wouldn't you say?

- I would if I had a say anymore.

- In any event, money's due to be phased out soon, so why worry about it? We have everything we need right here.

Getting nowhere fast, I left the convenor's poly-tunnel where she'd been planting that season's crop of high-yield hemp. It would keep the local youth out of trouble and off the streets Eileen had insisted. I'm not surprised. It looked like cannabis to me.

I walked past the free-for-all health clinic. Behind the community orchard. Through the youth theatre rehearsal space. Into the Secular Gospel Singers practice. Across the park where the Third Age philosophy and Tai Chi club was in session. Into and out of the collective kitchen where the community restaurant, crèche and drop-in was. Around the back of the workers' council hall where an organising meeting to get the local area ready for the phasing out of the police force was in progress. Back to my so-called Counter-Revolutionary Objector's luxury apartment (ex-council flat) where according to the Three Counties Caucus of Workers' Collectives, "the religiously deluded, the economically burdened, the ideologically opposed and any other political dissident" who was so inclined were corralled like Las Vegas high rollers into Smurf Village.

From my leafy balcony I saw two former Chase Manhattan bankers sip Long Island teas and stare open-mouthed at the latest pieces of socialistic wisdom. The community agitational propaganda walls had replaced advertising billboards for movies, cars and colas. Among this week's batch was a giant red and black poster designed in the style of the German expressionist school. It read: Money is the alienated ability of peoplekind. A group calling itself Jehovah's Witnesses Of The Left had unfurled a banner which declared: Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist.

It was then I remembered what my self-made multimillionaire father said. One of seventeen children, Roberto "Bobby" Garcia came from a shanty town called Mi Peru just outside Lima. Before the global revolution I went back as part of the World Bank's SEGINDCO (sustainable economic growth in developing countries) programme. He warned me there'd be days like these. A closed market where there is no money, and all possessions are communal, where everyone is equally a worker and an owner, where no opportunity for personal gain or right to property exists. An extreme left-wing utopia. He fought against it all his life. His struggle got to him in the end. He just couldn't keep it up. Working all the hours God sent. Maximising profitability day and night. A lot of Peruvian shanty kids were given work as immigrant fruit pickers in the North. Thanks to my dad. Now they've been turned into smart-ass hippies staying at home to get classical liberal educations, achieve personal growth, cultivate ideas and grow their own damn cannabis!

That reminds me. I need to take Ma out. It's Wednesday. She loves the bingo down the Rosa Luxembourg & Isabel Allende Social Club. Last week she had two lines. She won a personal development course, a vibrator and Papa Smurf doll. Soon it'll be the only place where you'll need money. God-awful revolution.