Leftovers

Contents

To George Hanna, with thanks.

‘We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up – and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.’

Kate Bolick, ‘All The Single Ladies’,
The Atlantic
magazine

I am a Leftover.

Well, according to this ridiculous quiz in
Style and Food Magazine
I’m a Leftover:

Bridget Jones is so mid-90s! Today’s 30-somethings manage hedge funds, plan mini-music festivals and bake macrobiotic Red Velvet cupcakes, all without breaking a sweat! Answer these four questions to discover which tribe you belong to:

1) Work – Do you:

2) Love and Sex – Are you:

3) Your weekends are spent:

4) Your role models are:

Mostly As – You’re an Alpha Alfalfa!

Mostly Bs – You’re a Gluten-free Glamorista!

Mostly Cs – You’re a Leftover!

Quiz by Khloe B

Well, Khloe, I have four things to say to you:

1) I am due to be promoted this Christmas, which is now only 307 days away. (It’s a week after Valentine’s, and we’ve just brainstormed our XtraSpecial Xmas poster concepts: Turkey Cran-Apple-Stuffing Ball Pizza anyone?)

2)
Everyone
has failed relationships. Perhaps not quite as fail-y as mine; still, your mistakes, your failures – they make you who you are, don’t you know?

3) Eating alfalfa is about as much fun as eating a handful of baby’s hair. And gluten-free? I happen to be a
huge
fan of gluten: bread, cakes, pasta. Some of my best friends are pasta. So no, Khloe, there will be no gluten-free alfalfa flatbreads.

4)Who actually spells Khloe with a K? Someone who doesn’t know how to spell Khloe, that’s who. Is
your
role model a Kardashian?

And another thing, Khloe: anger has nothing to do with anything. You shouldn’t try to pigeonhole people, that’s all. It’s stupid. Really stupid. In fact I’ll tell you something else that’s stupid: quizzes like this. Stupid quizzes in crappy magazines. Sorry, make that stupid kuizzes in krappy magazines.

I am not a bloody Leftover.

Show me someone in London who loves a Monday morning and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t take public transport, doesn’t work at NMN Advertising, and doesn’t make ads for Fletchers pizzas; pizzas that you wouldn’t feed to a dog. Not unless you’d been having an ongoing Mafia feud with that dog and his entire family for several generations. Even then you’d probably only feed that dog a single mouthful of pizza before taking pity on him and reaching for the Pedigree Chum.

This morning the tube was delayed, so I was delayed, and by the time I reach the glass revolving doors of NMN, just off Charlotte Street, it’s already 7.34 a.m. Free breakfast, courtesy of NMN, runs strictly from 6.30 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. Free breakfast is one of the few perks still left in this office. Obviously there’s no such thing as a free breakfast and these breakfasts are a trap, designed to lure you in to work prematurely. However (and it is an important however): Sam, Head of The Post Room, has proved beyond doubt that the egg and bacon croissants NMN use as bait
are
worth coming in early for.

For a bloke who’s spent ten years dossing around in a mail room, Sam’s remarkably good with computers. Last summer he was so bored, he created an interactive 3D model on his Mac. He programmed in all the variables:

• Croissant Induced Happiness versus Joys of a Longer Lie-in
  
• Relative Density of Commuters on the Northern Line 06:00 to 08:00
  
• Financial and Emotional Costs of an Inferior Breakfast from Somewhere Else
  

Then he did some sums and an A3 colour printout: the croissants won. I had never even considered putting egg mayo and bacon into a croissant. Fried egg and bacon between two slices of a fresh white sandwich loaf? Sure, that’s a classic. But egg and bacon crammed into a seductively flaky French buttery croissant with melted cheese on top? If I were Robbie Doggett, NMN’s Head of Creative Thinking (and King of Trying to Be Down With the Kids even though he’s forty-nine), I’d say
OMG
, or
hashtag ooh la la brekkie.

I don’t say either. I’m thirty-six, I don’t txtspk out loud, I don’t wear £200 customised Nikes and I don’t spend all day Tweeting shite. I would simply say ‘great croissants’; but I can’t, because it’s four minutes past the freebie and they’ve been removed. Instead I head for the mail room.

Sam’s sitting in his swivel chair wearing his favourite Bowie t-shirt and distressed jeans. (‘Distressed’, due to the fact that he’s worn them constantly since 1993; unlike Robbie Doggett’s jeans, which are made to look distressed by a team of under-age Cambodian fabric workers who are, I suspect, genuinely distressed.)

‘Seven letters, spice from crocus …’ Sam says, looking up from the crossword and giving me a brief once over. Sam is annoyingly cute: green eyes, light brown wavy hair, and a permanently amused smile that’s the result of him being privy to every last thing that goes on in this agency. It’s a good job he’s lazy, rude and smokes all day, which work against his natural attractions and mean I don’t have to fancy him. Much.

‘Hold on, I know it, Sam, I do … nutmeg?’

‘One letter short.’ He shakes his head in mock disapproval. ‘And there’s me thinking you might be hungry …’ He points his finger at a stash of goodies hiding under a paper napkin on his desk.

‘You saved one for me! You can be such a charmer …’

‘I didn’t save one for you, I saved one for whoever solves eight across,’ he says. ‘Come on, Suze, sixth letter’s an O, you’re always good on the food questions …’

‘O … o … Saffron. It’s saffron.’

He nods, then slides his chair over to the pile of goodies and whips the napkin away like a toreador. Not only has he saved me a croissant, he’s also snaffled a chocolate muffin. Best of all, he’s ordered in some of those nice Muji fibre-tip pens that are strictly contraband in our new cost-cutting regime, and a brand new pack of turquoise Post-it notes!

This is what my life has come to: elation over a pack of stolen Post-it notes. (It’s been a bad couple of years.) I could almost hug him, but Sam doesn’t do touching at all – unlike every other man in this building who does far too much touching.

‘Thanks Sam, I owe you.’

‘Yeah, yeah … just bring me in some of that chocolate pudding next time you make it.’

‘Which one? The roulade?’

‘Which one’s that?’ he says.

‘Round, in slices, had raspberries in it last time.’

‘Oh no, not interested in fruit. The one with the brownie bits on top.’

‘Ultimate death-by-brownie cheesecake bake?’

‘Yep.’

‘You didn’t think it was too sweet?’

‘No, it was good. Death by brownie. Good way to die. Better than car crash or drowning.’

‘Happy Monday to you too.’

Monday morning means updating The Status Report:

• ‘Project F’ – client briefing – venue TBC
  
• Brief creative team
  

I live my life in w/cs. Week commencings.

For example, I know that w/c 23rd April we will be shooting our new TV ad for ‘Project F’ whether I like it or not. And I do not.

Devron from Fletchers is briefing me tomorrow. We haven’t even started the project yet, but according to the timing plan we’re already two months late. Devron keeps changing his mind about the brief. It’s probably going to end in disaster, but hey – ‘
Tight deadlines are what keep this business fun!
’ That’s according to my boss, Berenice: a woman whose idea of fun is Excel. Excel the spreadsheet, not ExCel the conference centre, though she is a woman who loves an industry conference. Networking is one of her middle names: Berenice Robot-Psychopath Networking Davis.

Which reminds me, w/c 4 June I’m being roped in to The Tasty Snacking Show, again. Last year Fletchers forced me into fancy dress to publicise their new ‘Pizza Spagnola!’ range. Words can’t describe the humiliation of getting stuck in the ticket barrier at Earl’s Court tube dressed as a Spanish sausage. Take my word for it, there’s no obvious place to stick an Oyster card when you’re a chorizo.

W/c 16 July – a week in Centre Parcs Cumbria to brainstorm Christmas 2015.

W/c 3 September, birthday week – I shall be on holiday, somewhere hot, preferably with a man but more than likely with Dalia. (That’s if I can persuade her to be parted from her on-off-off boyfriend for long enough to board a plane.)

W/c 17 December – get my bonus, pay off my debts and finally get promoted to the board, thus proving to my parents that I am not a failure and I am not a quitter. Then quit. Work out my three-month notice period in a state of sheer unadulterated bliss, every day a rainbow. Release myself into the free world just in time for spring and start doing what I was put on this earth to do. (I’ll have worked out what that is by then. Definitely.)

My whole life spent, living in the future.

The one good thing about Mondays? They go fast.

The hours are eaten up by a sequence of pointless, infuriating, navel-gazing meetings:

Team Meeting, Floor Meeting, Department Meeting, Production Meeting and finally Meeting-Planning Meeting. Yes. Just when you think it’s safe to go back to your desk at 6.30 p.m., the account directors have a meeting just to talk about the rest of the week’s meetings. Still, tonight we’re finished by 7 p.m., and I race out of the door before Berenice can make her usual
hi-larious
joke – ‘half day, Susannah?’