Maybe smarties have the answer

Debra didn’t want to be a lawyer. She, along with most of her friends had no idea how they ended up working in a thankless, meritless, money-grabbing, money-saving world of pompous twits.

The thanks is keeping the contract so you all have jobs, says the guy with the porche and the ‘second spring holiday sunkissed tan’. ‘Great, yep… thanks for that’.

She took another smartie from the tube. Seven in seven minutes and still not enough.

The book had said smarties would help. It had specifically stated that ‘everytime you need to rant or swear calmly take a smartie from the tube and place it in your mouth. There, you’re back in control’.
It did not give any disclaimer that ‘it doesn’t work if you’re on your third packet and at only 10.10am’. Defeated, fat and now addicted to smarties.

The fax machine had broken, again and there was no-one to shout at (smartie 8). Not that anyone listened to Debra (smartie 9). And it was due at court in 15 minutes (new pack).

Debra trundled up the stairs, in the shoes that really didn’t fit but were kept in the office in case of 3rd floor emergencies, to the fax machine on the 3rd floor. She buzzed in, found the fax machine, placed the paper in the feeder and pressed send.

She crossly stomped back down the stairs, buzzed in and made her way to the desk. ‘Brilliant’ she muttered as she was then met at her desk by crazy smile Brenda sitting in her chair like an evil Bond villain.
Brenda was the receptionist who never stopped smiling but never really looked very happy, very very scary.

The message was delivered with cutting precision and a wry smile. ‘The court would like to know why 8 black pages had clogged up their fax machine for the last 5 minutes’. A Brendonian ‘you know the paper goes face down, don’t you’, a turn and a waltz away was enough to tip her just that little over the rest of the packet.

Yep, this was going to be the day. Thank heavens for the multipack.
Bother, only 1 box left.

And before she knew it all Debra could think of was what happens after 5. Where would she get more smarties? did she have enough for 2 packets and the bus? Or would she have to walk home?

Episode 2 - Ready for Action

It was his third visit to the kitchen in 30 minutes.
It was not that he did not enjoy doing what it was he was paid to do, Charles just sometimes liked to leave it to the last minute.

For the maximum satisfaction, there had to be stress, anxiety, the rush of adrenaline.
And the relief. The smug satisfaction that he had managed it against all the odds. And against all of the hurdles that he himself had set.

It was 3.25pm and the deadline for proceesing was 4pm.
Charles had started dealing with the invoice an hour earlier. He had spent the first five minutes looking for the VAT position and the next 55 advising his gullible assistant Gemma, to play hardball with her wedding caterers. ‘they won’t say no Gemma, even if they do, don’t back down. It’s your wedding. They will do as you say’.

On a good day he would have made sure that everything was in place before lunch. But today he was feeling resentful. Ella had still been in bed when he left the house and he knew that the lazy hound would be spending her day lounging on the sofa, drinking gin and watching mid afternoon weepies. This itself did not upset him as much as knowing that the there was cricket to be watched and Ella would be wasting the opportunity watching badly acted, drippy love stories which were, for want of there being videos in 1953, the predecessor to the ‘straight to video’ phenomena.

He fully anticipated having to go home, wash up, cook, wash up, put the laundry in and hang the laundry up. All the time being pleasant to Ella. It was her birthday after all.
Nonetheless, it had to be more fun than Invoice 6.

At 4pm the invoice remained unprocessed and a cursing Charles was frantically trying to work out why the database did not want to accept the information he was trying to store. Banging the keyboard helped as much as kicking the casing of the hard drive, stomping his foot, swearing at IT and sighing in a manner mostly associated with weak amateur dramatic acting.

A smirking Charles emerged at 4.25pm, triumphant. ‘Ha!’.
White collar rebellion at its lowest level.

During the next 35 minutes Carles arranged his email inbox, sorted his intray into chronological order, made another cup of coffee, and one for Gemma, spent several minutes changing into his trainers, checked the BBC website in case anything exciting had happened since 3.55pm (it had not) and casually meandering to the coat stand.

At 5.00pm he was out of the office door, heading home.

Episode 1 - Flirty at thirty

Ella sat at staring the computer screen, waiting for inspiration.
She considered that, as 30 was such a definitive, depressing and a rather too significant number, she had to write about the fact that she had reached 30 and the fact that she achieved none of the goals she set herself in her 20s and that she was clearly a million miles away from where she wanted to be.

The fact that Ella had no idea where she wanted to be did not assist in shifting her mood from the edge of that very dark place she was in the process of visiting to the realisation that she still had rather a lot of time to do what it was that she intended to achieve.

No, the bottle of vodka in bath. The drifting of time. A youth wasted.

At 25 Ella sat teary eyed, alone in her bedroom, and penned a short story uncomfortably entitled ‘Oh my God, I’m 25’. In the years that ensured, for good reason, she had not shown it to anyone else.

Now at 30, the embarrassing memory of the childish 25 affair resting in the uncomfortable place between her shoulder blades, she was embarking on another epic. ’There are few darker places than 30’.

After 3 lines and 20 minutes of thinking about it, intermingled with a few games of spider solitaire, it was decided that in another 6 years she would look back and cringe with the same fervour as 25 period piece invoked. She turned off the computer and headed for the bathroom.

‘There has to be something in here I can find?’ was mumbled as Ella searched through the draws of potions, lotions, poisons she had been suckered into buying with the promise of the free gifts (still in their wrappers in the draw below).

‘Anti-ageing face pack for oily skin, flaming Perfect!’.
She look at her dry cracked pink nose in the mirror and left the bathroom empty handed.

In the rented 1 bedroomed basement flat Ella had little option but to head to the lounge. She was so very bored. She’d taken the day off work to hide from the world and was beginning to regret it.

The kitchen looked even more unappealing
‘I am not washing up on my 30th birthday’.
And the birthday chocolate had been pushed to the very back of the treat shelf, in the cupboard furthest from reach.
Banging her knuckles on the table Ella remained disciplined. One a day, after the gym.
She knew that she would shortly have to fit into that size 10 wedding dress she’d been eyeing up in between the moment of literary madness and 'spider'.
At least she could multitask.
No date had been set but Ella knew that it was a steep downhill slope from the ‘I’ll lose the weight nearer the time’ theorem, to ‘bugger it, I’ll go for the size 12’.

The TV went on, and off in an almost circular action, after 3 seconds scanning every channel and realising that daytime TV was clearly created by the government to encourage the unemployed into work. Charles would not be back for 2 hours.

‘I’m still not doing the washing up’ a determined Ella repeated several times before the reverse psychology of it directed Ella into the kitchen to face the mountain of unclean receptacles. She turned on the tap on and started washing the dishes. ‘Bugger!’.