One of the chiefs is leaving the office for a meeting. He and his second in command are both standing in reception, wearing their his and hers black leather jackets, and I swear SiC is turning up her collar (perhaps just to untangle her scarf - but still).
It’s just like an episode of Happy Days.
‘So what are you two both in the same biker gang?’ I quip.
‘Ooooh that’s so amusing, Marion,’ drawls the Chief, shrugging his shoulders, shooting his cuffs and smoothing back his hair as he breezes out, unamused, trailed by the SiC, who follows like his minder. MD has had a haircut and looks pretty darn Young Elvis fine with his short, back and quiff. I haven't seen a leather jacket yet, but surely it's only a matter of time before he's got the comb and the Brylcreem out and joins the rest of the gang. I remark that he looks a lot like Mark Kermode, the film critic.
'Oh, I get that a lot,' he says with a weary sigh, patently underwhelmed. 'So, how much longer is this joke going to run?' He asks. I let it go, I'm too busy singing Leader of the Pack which is as widely appreciate at my wit.
‘Vroom, vroom...’
In truth there’s little to be happy about. Office life is frenetic and time has come to be classified as AF - After Frankfurt - which kicks off next week when all the Chiefs migrate to Germany and we Indians keep the home fires burning and Aravind, our Booker shortlisted person, interviewed, tuxed-up and televised.
Well I say we, but I really just mean publicity. My only contribution will be sitting anonymously on the phones.
Speaking of which, an agent rings for one of the Chiefs and snippily asks me who I am.
Good question, darling. Who am I? I've introduced myself to you once before, we one had a close mutual friend, we've had dinner together, you told me a disgusting story about the place you used to live and I snaffled it and put it in my novel (only to have it removed by the editor) but who the hell am I? I give her my name. It doesn't register.
As I may have intimated - we're stressed.
The bitching hour becomes a whole bitching morning. I've been entrusted to source a new phone for one that went AWOL in New York, and so I spend an hour talking to various people on the Orange website.
Mr T tells me it should be 3G. I repeat this to the sales person who sucks her teeth. 'Well you can't have a Blackberry, they're not 3G. You can have a Nokia....' and she names a model, then corrects herself: 'Oh no, you can't that's out of stock.' She then runs through another three out of stock models. I mention another specification - I've been told I need the SPV series. More teeth sucking. 'No, these are being upgraded and phased out, and they're moving over to HTC'. I write all this down in an email and send it off to the phone-jacked Chief.
'What does all this Spiv stuff mean?' he asks, emerging from his office, hair awry, and a confused, oncoming articulated lorry look in his eyes, somewhat like the ex-husband when I used to ask him to change the channel on the television.
'No *ing idea,' I respond and get out my own phone to show him. It cost £10 and has big letters on the front. I don't even know how to take it off silent which, in any case since it never rings, would make no bloody difference.
'I want something like this,' he says and picks up a Demi-Chief's SPV.
'But they're not making them anymore' I parrot (Orange will be ringing any day to offer me a job) 'It's an HTC now'.
'What's that?'
This could go on for some time and, indeed, the story continues - Orange sodding Wednesdays.
I spend another half an hour on the website and find a model somewhat similar to his last phone, negotiate a £50 discount and call him over to look at it.
'I don't like it,' he says.
Frankly, I've lost the will to live.
I'm on Pay as You Go, which given the dire economic crisis is probably no bad thing. The newspaper headlines swim up, more depressing every day. Everyone in the office is in global financial meltdown gloom. I don’t know what to be more depressed about: that I have no savings, or that the bank in which I don’t have savings is plummeting towards ruin.
‘Does it count as savings if you have money in a current account,’ I ask?
‘Who has money in their current account?’
Good point.
‘Who has money?’
Really good point.
Talk turns instead to next week’s Booker and the sun comes out, together with dresses with necklines that plunge like RBOS shares. The announcement is hanging there in the middle of next week like the star at the top of the Christmas tree. While Fonz and the gang are flying back from Frankfurt for the official dinner, the rest of us will be watching it on telly upstairs at the Union Club, where, according to someone over at Faber who are having their Booker party downstairs at the same venue, you are not allowed to dance.
No dancing? What, not even if/when we win? And in any case, really - dancing? Is that even a possibility? What kind of party are Faber & Faber having? It’s all starting to sound a bit Colin Firth in Mamma Mia, or drunk dads at a wedding. I can see the leather jackets being oiled up as we speak.
I can't wait.
