On The Table Read Magazine, “the best entertainment eBook magazine UK“, Drawing A Blank by Michael J. Mason is a hilariously unfiltered memoir that captures the chaotic, eccentric, and often absurd British workplace culture of the 1980s through the author’s diary-style anecdotes as a freelance design draughtsman in the commercial building services industry.
Drawing A Blank
In Drawing a Blank: From Gluttons to Liars – A Hilarious Exposé of 1980s Workplace Culture, Michael John Mason serves up a wickedly funny, unfiltered memoir that drags readers into the chaotic, comical, and often downright bizarre underbelly of British working life in the late 20th century.
Armed with fifteen years of diary-style entries from his time as a freelance design draughtsman in the commercial building services industry, Mason paints a vivid picture of a world populated by bullies, fantasists, compulsive liars, and eccentrics so unapologetically odd they’d make a sitcom writer blush. This isn’t a rose-tinted ode to the good old days—it’s a biting, dryly observed record of a vanished working-class world, delivered with a mix of casual brutality and comic resignation.
Mason’s memoir doesn’t bother with heroes or grand narratives. Instead, it revels in the absurdity of the everyday, chronicling the misfits and miscreants he encountered across dozens of high-profile British companies between 1979 and 1994. From misogynists to drop-down drunks, gluttons to outright frauds, the cast of characters is as colorful as it is dysfunctional. There’s no sugarcoating here—names have been changed, but the madness remains untouched, drawn straight from real-life encounters. The result is an insider’s guide to everything that went wrong on the way to getting buildings built, told by someone who survived the drafting table with his wit intact.
What sets Drawing a Blank apart is its refusal to romanticize or fictionalize. Written in fragmented, diary-like bursts, the book captures the raw texture of a workplace where incompetence was a lifestyle and eccentricity a job requirement. Mason’s tone lands somewhere between a raised eyebrow and a weary sigh, sketching scenes that are both deeply personal and universally relatable. Take, for instance, the colleague who couldn’t draft a straight line to save their life, or the compulsive liar spinning tales wilder than the blueprints they were supposed to deliver. These aren’t stories of ambition or empire-building—they’re glimpses of a working life scratched out in biro, not gold.
The book’s humor is its secret weapon. Mason’s dry wit transforms even the most maddening moments into laugh-out-loud anecdotes, whether he’s exposing a macho-man’s bluster or a glutton’s battle with the office biscuit tin. Yet beneath the comedy lies a quiet act of rebellion—a refusal to let the ridiculousness of this era fade into obscurity. Drawing a Blank is as much a cultural artifact as it is a memoir, preserving a corner of British industry that’s now largely gone. It’s a world of smudged drawings, smoky offices, and characters so larger-than-life they’d be unbelievable if they weren’t so painfully real.
For anyone who’s ever endured a dysfunctional workplace or wondered what the 1980s were really like behind the scenes, Drawing a Blank is a must-read. Mason’s stories remind us that sometimes, what’s left out of the official record—the chaos, the characters, the sheer absurdity—says more than what’s written down. With candor and a knack for finding humor in the hopeless, he’s crafted a book that’s both a love letter to the lunacy of the past and a middle finger to sentimentality. In the end, Drawing a Blank proves that even in the messiest of workplaces, there’s a story worth telling—especially if it’s this hilarious.
Michael John Mason
Michael J. Mason was born in Bow, East London. After fifteen years in the commercial building services industry, he transitioned into the health and fitness sector, working with national-level athletes and clinical populations alike. He has managed health clubs, lectured for the Health Education Authority, and worked as a physical therapist at the Priory Hospital, specialising in eating disorders and exercise therapy. ‘Drawing A Blank’ is his first published memoir. He currently lives in Spain and has taught health and fitness classes in English and Spanish and also works with clients by way of GP referral.
Find more from Michael John Mason now:
Kindle: https://amzn.to/3F8mSLt
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