Bev chuckled as she finished her call, and snapped her mobile phone shut. That Elizabeth was a lark, honestly. Still, it was nice having a mate in central London, where one could just drop all one’s bags after a busy afternoon’s shoe shopping and share a cuppa. But she wasn’t so sure about the whole bent little finger thing while drinking, and it was taking some effort to master without dropping the fine bone china in the process, or sluicing tepid brown drink down one’s frock.
Orange blooms
From her office window, Bev observed a man walking down the street with a resplendent bunch of orange blooms.
They were not for her.
Bev excused herself from her desk and headed to the office kitchenette – a seemingly innocent move. What was not so innocent, however, was her knowledge that the narrow aluminium-framed window in the kitchen was the only aperture on the entire office floor that actually opened to the outside world. From here, aided by a small plastic stool usually used by the cleaner, Bev was able to pour a large beaker of steaming hot tea down into the alley below, directly onto the head of the man delivering flowers.
Which she did.
Nobody noticed the yelling from the man down below, because they couldn’t hear him.
And that, mused Bev, was the business justification for sealed air-conditioned offices. She liked the modern world of work.
Cake and the devil
Finally, at the end of an eternity, the angst’d youth left the Vicar’s study and he was on his own. The tea trolley was waiting and in a bound he was there. He hacked into the cake like a man possessed by the devil, cutting himself a generous wedge of the tempting, moist, firm sweetmeat.
“Oh cakey, cakey, Cakey!!” the Vicar muttered excitedly to himself, and dispensing with the niceties of using a fork, crammed the thin end of the double serving straight into his wide-open mouth.
Just then, the telephone rang.
More tea, Vicar
“Ah yes,” said the Vicar who was slumped heavily in the old leather arm chair in the half-light of the late afternoon, his empty china tea cup resting in his right hand on the arm of the chair. His response was completely disconnected from the young parishioner whom he was counseling; in fact the Vicar had been in a drifting haze of half-consciousness and half-nap: a skill he had perfected these many years such that his occasional “Ah yes” remarks convinced the guest of his interest and attentiveness, while in fact he enjoyed a brief kip.
A light trumpeting sound emanated from the trousers of the Vicar, at which he shuffled slightly in the old chair, a move so oft practiced it was subconscious to the grey-haired cleric. The self-absorbed young guest continued with his monologue of introspection while the Vicar eyed the ticking clock on the mantle and wished for the minute hand to arrive at the top of the hour, a moment at which the youth would be politely but firmly dismissed from the parsonage with his woes bundled up in his nylon anorak, and another cup of stewed tea could be poured, along with a generous second serving of the house-keeper’s moist cake. Lovely.
Lime green
Samantha sat at her window seat, sipping her cup of pungent Jarrah, adjacent to that unknown minion, was her name Bev? Tess? She couldn’t remember, it hardly mattered. This tea was sooo nice, she told herself.
She felt so comfortable today in her Cartier Keyhole suit, it had been so expensive in Paris but worth every Euro, and especially as it showed off her mock-antique décolletage so nicely. And the lime-green cork wedges were just sooo a la mode in Paris – surely these Sydney people would get the point soon, and she would get a promotion.
Samantha tried hard to block out that irritating humming coming from the opposite cubicle – it was that annoying Bess again – what was she humming? Oh good grief, was it Lionel Richie? How passé. She was grateful when her mobile phone began to vibrate on her desk, covering the irritating dirge of the serf girl with a clever rendition of “Take On Me.”
“Amos! Doll! …”, she began with exaggerated delight as she answered her diminutive mobile handset…
Fashionably Jarrah
Bev says:
I am in an inexplicably good mood today and nothing makes me happier than wailing on someone else’s fashion sense.
My neighbour at work today is wearing a lime green paisley see-through top with a delightfully huge key-hole cut out – revealing her décolletage in all its glory. This is enhanced by cork wedge heels, with a lime strap.
She calls everyone “doll” and her mobile phone ring-tone is A-ha’s “Take on Me”. Nothing is more enjoyable than having that endlessly blasting away at 3000 decibels as she steps away from her desk to make another cup of Jarrah.
