It's amazing in this day and age to think that they still haven't invented a cure for the common cold, diabetes, obesity, asthma and supermarket trolleys that can't steer straight!

We have survived inventions like nuclear power, weapons, plastic cups, instant coffee, pop groups and fast food.  We have gone into space, invented computers that can fit into the palm of your hand, email and digital watches.  So why the hell did they stop there?

What I really needed right now was a space suit that didn't imitate a coffin, one that allowed me to scratch my backside.  One that didn't stink of the countless times it had been worn by assorted sweaty members of the Luna maintenance team, of which I was one.

Today I was out on the surface with a green apprentice, showing him how to carry out routine maintenance on the solar collectors.  It was only Ted Jenkins's third trip out onto the surface of the moon, as he was normally assigned to tunnel maintenance below ground, but some idiot in Head Office down on earth had decided that multi tasking was the way to go, so here I was, saddled with a rank amateur, and none too happy about it. 

You see, Jenkins was accident prone.  If an airlock door stuck in the open position, odds were that Jenkins had been the last to touch it, and I still get the shudders when I remember the time he had got the waste extraction system operating in reverse.  Small wonder that he was  known throughout the sub-Luna complex as Jinx Jenkins, but it was hard for anyone to dislike him, as he was a cheery optimistic kid, whose catchphrase was, 'Ill get it right soon!'.

As it was night-time that week, we needed to check that all was well for the collectors to resume operations when the sun rose, seven days hence.

'We just need to make sure these dials are calibrated correctly,' I told him, demonstrating how it was done.

'So these machines collect the sunshine and pipe it down into the tunnels to provide our heat?' he asked.

'Well, that's over-simplifying things a bit, but basically that's right.'  I said.  'They collect the power from the sunlight, and we store it and use it to heat, to light and to cook.  It means we need to import far less fuel from Earth to run our generators.  In a year or so we'll have enough collectors running so that we can get right through the night on stored power alone.' 

As the nights on the moon lasted for 14 days, this would require doubling the amount of collectors already in operation, and much of the industry on the moon back then was geared to producing ever more collectors.

I'd been instructed to demonstrate the calibration procedure on three collectors before turning Jinx loose on the rest.  I played safe, and showed him ten calibrations instead.  When I was sure he had the hang of it, I told him, 'OK, now you tackle the collectors numbered eleven to a hundred and I'll do numbers hundred and one to two hundred.  I'll come over and check on how you're going from time to time.'

'OK, I'll be fine,' he grinned.  'This my toolbox?'  At my nod, he picked it up and commenced work.  I moved across to my patch, and with trepidation left him to his own devices while I worked.  Occasionally I went across to check his work, and he seemed to be doing everything right, so I gradually became less nervous as the hours wore on, and dropped my surveillance to one in every ten of his collectors.

At the end of our shift, we returned to the comfort of John Glenn cavern, and went our separate ways, he to the bachelor quarters, me to the small suite of rooms I shared with my husbands.  Women were pretty scarce on the moon in the early days, being outnumbered by men by something like six or seven to one,  and polygamous marriages were the norm for many years.  I had two co-husbands, which was plenty for me to handle, and I wondered at the stamina of some women who had three or more. 

I took a long shower with plenty of strong smelling soap to get rid of the stale sweat stink from the space suit.  I was still drying off in the warm air blast when the comm. box on the wall squawked at me.  It was Chief Engineer Borden, and he didn't sound happy.

'Report to my office, Madison,' he ordered in a snappy tone.

'Something wrong, Chief?' I asked.

'Get your tail over here pronto!'  So I got my tail over there pronto.  I used the moving walkway to go the ten kilometres from John Glenn cavern through a couple of airlocks into Gagarin cavern.  As I walked in through Borden's office door, I noticed a decided drop in temperature, and it wasn't all due to the Chief's chilly reception.  It didn't stay chilly for long, as with my first words I put my size sixes right in it.

'It's cool in here,' I remarked innocently. 'Do you need your thermostat fixing?'

'I need your hair brained assistant fixing!' he snarled, his face so red with fury that I swear it raised the temperature in the room by a couple of degrees.  'You were supposed to be supervising him.  What on Luna happened up there?'

'But I checked his work,' I protested, 'And he was getting things OK.  Why is it so cold in here?'

I'm a lady, so I won't repeat his next words, but my ears burned as I waited for him to calm down a little.

Eventually he settled his bulk behind his desk and looked at me with less than affection.  'It's bloody cold in here because you took bloody Jinx out onto the blasted surface to carry out a bleeding task obviously too sodding hard for his limited bloody intellect!' 

You'll understand that I have heavily censored his last statement.  I felt that he was being grossly unfair, as it hadn't been my idea to take our resident Jonah up top, but I let that pass, and contented myself with asking, 'Why, what's he done this time?'

'He managed to get the solar collectors up and running now, not in seven day's time, and the bloody things have been sucking the cold into the whole of Gagarin for the last hour.'

'But, but, but, I showed him how to set the timers, and that's one thing he didn't have any trouble with.'

'But he did have trouble remembering not to put his metal toolbox right next to the collectors, didn't he?  And you had trouble remembering to tell him that the metal would affect the magnetic strips.  He stuffed up all the collectors he worked on, so they'll all have to be recalibrated.'

'We're having to evacuate into John Glenn cavern before we all freeze to death, until you get out there on the surface and fix it up.  So as it's your cock-up, you're pulling a double shift, and don't even ask for overtime!'

I must have been having an off day all round, as I carelessly asked, 'Seeing as he made the mistake in the first place, is Jinx pulling a double shift too?'

The chief's scream of rage warned me just in time to dodge the desk lamp that barely missed my head.  I got out of the office just before a heavy paperweight hit the door.

So much for a relaxing evening at home with Jeff and Adrian.  It was going to be very lonely up on the surface.  I just hoped I could find a space suit that didn't smell quite so bad!