A Special Post To A Fellow Blogger

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Dear Amanda

Because I do love your blog and I always value the comments you leave on mine and because I am oh so grateful for the Tuesday Tipples and because I like you and suspect that we could be very good friends, I feel obliged to notify you of something terrible that is about to happen. Not on the scale of recent events there but worthy of advance warning…..

First though I need to go back a few years when I was away from the office for a few weeks and came back to find a new member of staff – Billi.

In a group of really talented, lovely, funny, beautiful people she has always stuck out as, well.......not !

She is a short, squat, scruffy, loud woman. It doesn’t help that she uses her very strong Liverpool accent almost as a form of aggression ! On most days she’ll come into work late, always looking slightly grubby with tatty combat trousers and shapeless tops, no make up and her lank, greasy hair scraped back off her face with an elastic band. Fortunately, she is kept hidden away deep in the main office far away from clients but …… on the odd occasion that she has come to a big event, she undergoes a magical transformation and she looks, well, there’s no other way of describing it but, quite beautiful. And when she got married, a year ago, I couldn’t believe the photos were of her as she looked so elegant.

But the thing is, she is quite vile. She shouts all the time, she always feels hard done by and so is permanently angry, she has the most dreadful phone manner, she swears using words that make me cringe, she can’t ever accept that she may be in the wrong and she has several huge chips on her shoulder.

She was brought in by one of the senior partners and the rumour is that they “knew” each other rather well though I can’t imagine how that could have come about.

Most people in the office have had a run-in with her, including me, just a few months after she arrived, when she got upset with me for not inviting her to a particular meeting. I told her it was because it didn’t involve her and she went off on one saying that she was fed up with the way I treated her, like she was dirt on my shoe and that actually I wasn’t all that and that I should take a long look in the mirror some time as even though I may think I’m young, I’m actually nothing but an old goat !! I told her to watch her tone and she challenged me to do my worst and see if she cares.

I stormed into Ken’s office and demanded that he do something about it and he said I should calm down and learn to cope with a “naturally fiery spirit” !!! That’s when I realised she must have something very big on him to let her get away with the constant episodes. Since then, I have rarely engaged with her and she has never made any attempt to apologise to me or anyone else.

Anyway, yesterday, she walked into the office and shouted “OK yous lot, listen up, ay’ve got summat to say! (I appreciate this is a very poor attempt to mimic her in writing but you need to know I do it brilliantly in real life). Ay’m leavin this doomp. Me husband’s gorra job in New Zealand so ay’m going withim and yous lot can all foock right off. Ay’ve hated every one of ya and you’ve mayde my life hell, so good riddance to the lotta yer an I ‘ope this coompany goes down, takin the lot of ya with it. See ya – wouldn’t wanna be ya”

Seriously, she really did say all that and she turned on her heel and walked back out again. There was a couple of seconds of silent shock and then everyone started cheering and laughing. Even Ken came out of his office smiling. However, I suddenly realised that our great joy means impeding doom for you, dear Amanda.

She’s coming to Christchurch !!

Musical Dreams

When Sasha announced last year, that she wouldn’t be applying to university, I was admittedly upset but she seemed adamant that she wanted to take a year out and I fought hard from telling her what I wanted her to do and allowed her to make her own decision.

I was worried that she would while away her days sleeping in and then going out with her friends but I have to say that although she enjoyed the long summer break she hasn’t wasted her time since September. She has found herself a part time job at a shop three days a week but more impressive is that she has been helping out at a soup kitchen on her days off and for a while now she has been working at a youth centre in her spare time too. And whatsmore, she seems to get a lot of pleasure doing that. So much so that she announced a while back that she was going to write a musical for the youngsters ! I told her I thought it was a lovely idea but assumed it might be something that never saw the light of day.

But then, a few weeks ago, she played me some of the music she has already written. She has done the opening and closing numbers and two other songs and when I heard it all I was completely blown away. It is amazing. The storyline centres around first love and the music definitely has hints of Grease, High School Musical, Glee and a bit of Hairspray thrown in for good measure. The kids will love it but I’m still getting over the fact that my daughter has put this together. My little girl !

She has been musical since she was tiny (she used to hum while lying in her cot) and is always singing and playing the piano and guitar. Her GCSE and A-level music compositions were pretty spectacular so I really shouldn’t be surprised but I just can’t get over how she has put this together in such a short space of time and how she has got it so right.

I was at an event with Lord Lloyd-Webber a few weeks back and although I enjoyed my brief conversation with him (about how he went out with Liza Minelli for a while!!) I had to keep stopping myself from butting in and saying “By the way, my daughter is 18 and has just written her first musical and IT’S BLOODY BRILLIANT - can you give her a job??!!! “ But I didn’t…..

Anyway, last night she asked me to help with some musical workshops for the kids so that she could work out who the strongest singers were and that was a fantastic experience. These kids, aged 11-16, were brilliant. So enthusiastic and they clearly love her. And, they made a great sound.

I think my rather beautiful, talented daughter is going to have a success on her hands and I am unashamedly bursting with pride !