Grumpy young woman

The alarm shrilled into my warm, comfortable world. The perfect period of thoughtlessness was shattered. I opened my eyes, my senses and my consciousness, shocked by the rudeness of the alarm tone. I had selected it so carefully the previous night from all the tones on my flashy new mobile phone. I chose what I thought was meant to be the most musical, the most soothing of the unimaginative list. It had sounded this morning like a hundred other chunky, rusting, metal-bodied alarm clocks that have huge pegs on them and constant wind-up needs.

Instinctively, I turned to my husband, to grasp at some of the pleasantness that had been killed. He was up already.

‘Jesus! It’s late! Shit! I’ve got so much to do at work,’ he said, as he rushed into the bathroom.

I turned away and tried to bury myself in the bed, desperately searching, and not finding.

* * *

I reached work early and thought that should please The Powers. I smiled at my new boss who was heading a project to which I had been assigned only two days ago. After a long minute, I decided smiling brilliantly at the side of her perfectly shaped and pointedly averted blonde head was not making me feel like a morning person. So I went for some free mud coffee and held the flimsy cup in a sort of cuddle.

* * *

Outside, it started drizzling, then forming puddles that refused to be drained away and then pouring malicious globules. The data on my screen was rushing up at me, waiting to be analysed. I stared at my screen with growing horror. My co-workers sat around, stone cold. Everyone typed away busily, haughtily, perfectly suited to their job descriptions. I turned to ask C for help, but when she replied with a voice treated with contempt and condescension, I gathered my tattered dignity around me and continued to work quietly.

My dignity suffered larger and larger holes in it over the next few hours. Soon, it barely covered my nakedness. My head throbbed with impotence. The thought of unpaid bills hammered nails into my brain, as if into a coffin.

* * *

I only have two university degrees in English. I have not been equipped by that glorious seat of enlightenment to deal with the obscenities of technical jargon and appalling grammar, combined. Tears welled up in my eyes as I read on my screen:

08/11/05 13:00:20: updated by SCAutomate CITTSI
Please advise engineer that:
IFolder is finish and working fine, Outlook is configered, IE is working fine, WLAN is configert, Timezone is set and Unisys is working without problemes. Please send now a technician on side and patch the NB in the correct VLAN. Planned is 57.20.155 and at the moment is the NB in 57.20.144., Please call the WSM to send the QIP after the change. //EKR@WSM

This was what I had been thrown into for the past two days. I felt violated. What chains circumstances trap us in, when simply walking out of a door seems like giving up a lung.

* * *

It was over for the day. I stood at the bus stop, trying to raise my slumped shoulders and bowed head.

Forty five minutes later, standing in the same spot, but now with my heavy coat tightly wrapped around me, my head was still quite low, as were my shoulders.

* * *

I watched the man walking into the fish and chips shop with horrified fascination. He had parked his battered car on the double yellow lines on the bus stop. He didn’t look concerned or apologetic. His unconcern, more than anything else that day, rankled me in my cold, bitter state. I wished I was a witch, so I could make The Bus appear just then, bearing down the road towards the bus stop and the offending car, protesting and threatening with Its great Big Horn. Retribution in Red. Justice. Hellfire and Brimstone. I willed with all the coldness of my body and warmth of my frustration for the miracle to take place.

While I stood and waited for a sign, I watched the man closely. He was of the jiggling variety. I am not sizeist, sexist, faithist or anythingotherist, but he rubbed my sensibilities raw. Clumps of loose flesh jiggled as he moved. Close cropped hair with too much hair gel. Gold watch fastened too tightly on his flabby wrist. Thick gold rings, five of them, and a thick gold bracelet. Tracksuit and white trainers. Pink, stretched face unmarked by any evidence of thought.

In the shop, he squinted at the Menu Board, prominently displayed, with large red letters. For agonising moments, he struggled to decipher the complex text of

MARINO FISH BAR

HADDOCK        £2.45

COD                 £2.45

SCAMPI            £2.15

EXTRA CHIPS   £0.95

This achieved, he turned to place his order with the smile-less, life-less flesh mannequin behind the counter.

The gravity of the scene was broken suddenly by the loud, uncultured blaring of the car’s horn. The man turned, with a gaping smile further mutilating his features. In the car were a brood of children, all clad in uniform tracksuits of pastel shades. In the front seat was their mother. She was faceless in the presence of white material stretched over her great bosom and grand gold hoop earrings. The family shouted/conversed for a few minutes across the span of the surging yellow line, the pulsing bus stop and the path leading to the fish and chips shop. The mannequin waited with programmed indifference while Father discussed with his distant family the difficult choice offered by the menu, then plied his body slowly to the car and back. Again, he tried to place his order. Again, his family’s summons intervened. This went on for some time, excruciating in its slow passage, while I fumed and the mannequin breathed.

I turned my eyes to the top of the road; that horizon where The Bus would appear to smite down these vulgar offenders. The sky gathered in greyness and gloom, but It did not appear.

Eventually, Father completed his slow and ponderous task of fetching greasy articles for the consumption of his beloved family. As he carefully balanced a mass of great grease-splotched packages in his massive arms, his face contorted itself into further pinkness. I watched the horizon and hoped. I believed in justice. Oh, I believed in sweet, sweet justice.

Father waddled forward, Mother’s gold hoop earrings shook and her bosom heaved, little heads bobbed up and down in excitement like birds being fed, the car slowly came to life, stayed, moved forward a little, stayed, moved forward and stayed on the double yellow lines, while fish and chips were portioned out generously. Then it drove away, carrying the subtlety-violators away, unaffected. I was left betrayed, cold, lonely.

* * *

The bus arrived an hour and a half late. I gathered my fragments and boarded it quietly, allowing necessity to defeat my indignation.