Twinset Tina

Sam makes coffee every morning, he is coffee monitor. Sam puts my lunchbox together. He wraps it in a plastic bag and puts it in my bag every morning.

Sam wore red to work today as it was Fijitsu Day.

Kirin was in a foul mood today. Not that I really noticed, only really through Kerin telling me that she was. Kirin and I joke a few times. Kerin complained about being behind constantly.

Kirin had meetings all day.

There was, of course, the continuing drama of Twinset Tina’s emails. Again, she was on the blower all day telling people that she’d had a catastrophe with her emails. Again, she was trying to retrieve work, or get out of work, I was never too sure. She is a techno idiot. She described things in amateur language, that of a techno illiterate. So, it was full of a lot of thingamabobs and whatsits.

Twinset Tina’s very mumsy. I looked her up in the data base, she is 60. She wears twinsets and pearls and has her hair shaped into an immaculate blonde bob. She wears chiffons and flowing dresses. She is squat and dumpy. 

At one point she got very excite and exclaimed. “You should see what a mess it’s in.”

The person on the other end of the phone said something funny, probably one of her old 1960s university crony friends, who understands as much as she does about the whole knew technology thang.

She laughed out loud and exclaimed, “You’d never guess what is in my box.”

I turned to Kirin and said, “Oh I don’t know, A sprig of lavender and a lace hanky.”

Kirin laughed.

Twinset Tina went on, practically doing the linguistic version of the split beaver in her continuing, washed up ex-university employee, narrative of her virus attacked email problems.

“You should see my box,” she girlishly exclaimed, dumb girl still talking, like some old clueless aunt.

“I can’t touch that,” I said to Kirin, both of us realising at the same time that I said, I can’t touch Twinset Tina’s box. We had to look away from each other, so we both didn’t spontaneously fall about laughing.

Twinset Tina works with Kevin Maxwell, the kind of sweet, and mumsy policy writers. They both write endless submissions, or at least I think that is what they do. Neither of them has the slightest idea how to use a computer. They are always advising each other how to fix each other’s computer problems. Computers remain a mystery to both of them. They are old school, they are a bit like the Endora and Maurice of the finance world, except without the flourish, of course. They sit opposite the COO Jon Austin, who seems to be everybody’s mate, and the rather aggressive inhouse lawyer, Stella Chalmers, who seems to be forever fending the two old gasbags off. I often Hear Stella’s voice rise as she insists that either Twinset Tina, or Kevin goes back to their desks so she can work. Stella has a tendency to just drone on and on and on in the back ground. Twinset Tina’s phone calls do the same thing, she can just blabber on and on, as she turns to the wall and speaks complicity, which for some reason seems to send her slither like lilt along the wall to me, rather than out into the open plan room. She always sounds like she is trying to con somebody somewhere out of something. I don’t know why, perhaps it is all in my head.

Guido was coming between 4pm & 4.30pm, he was out on the road. 

“If I get there earlier than you, I’ll leave something in your letterbox.”

‘Two’, I replied. LouLou always wants me to get her some to take home.

I walked to the ATM with Kerin who was catching the tram to Hoddle Street to her father’s business to catch a lift home with her father. She claims to be needing to lose 10 kilos before her May wedding to Tommy. She told me Tommy is all muscle, 120 kilos of muscle, 6 foot 3. So, she is swimming at the top of the gene pool when choosing a mate. Tommy sounds sweet too, he cooks and is always thinking of her during the day, often calling her about something.

You know, I now wanna meet Tommy.

I got home at 4.38pm. No “little something” in the letterbox, as yet.

Guido arrived at 5.30pm, the same time as Sam. The bulldog alarm went off, Buddy dashed in from outside heading straight to the front door, as his Vulcan doggie hearing hears the front gate clack. I look up expecting to see Sam and Guido went “Ta da!” in front of me. Sam came in behind him.

I showed Guido the picture of Stella. 

“Why spend so much money,” said Guido. “There are plenty of dogs that nee good homes, get a rescue dog.”

It was a sunny afternoon, the light from which seemed to stretch late into the evening.

Antony called. He invited himself over on Sunday, when he heard I had just got a new delivery from Guido.

Sam talked nonstop about Stella, the bulldog puppy.

We ate stir-fried veggies for dinner. 

I fell asleep on the couch. I saw Sam monitoring me, trying to catch me with my eyes closed, as he loves to do. It kept me on my toes, but it was almost impossible. We were watching the Living Room when I gained my three strikes and I was out. 

I woke up sometime later, and the TV was off. 

I wrote a piece of my journal that had been going around in my head, the sprig of lavender and the lace hanky, then I went to bed.

The new kids across the road were having a party. How many new kids have I seen have a party on that balcony over the road? The two terrace house next to each other have been, what appear to be, student houses. They are always loud and throwing parties at the beginning, but that pretty quickly stops.

Sam put on piano music at 11.11pm and we both fell asleep in the normal few minutes.