Unsettling email from boss

Why is it that the female instinct is so frequently one of self doubt?

In a guilty moment this afternoon when wondering whether all sorts of disasters were happening at work due to my malingering with a migraine, I checked my emails and wished I hadn’t. Ominous looking message from boss entitled “Various” leapt out at me. Fear struck my heart. Did not open but cannot purge from thoughts. Various what?

Various issues for discussion?

Various clients who have made complaints against you?

Various matters in which you have been negligent and the firm is now being sued?

A large file attachment came with the message. Further panic. Perhaps it is a list of my internet history during working hours over the last six months. Felt my mouth going dry and my body getting weak. 

I will probably not sleep tonight as a result and may even have a nightmare if my alcohol consumption is not increased dramatically within the next hour.

Were I a man of course, my imaginings would be quite different. 

For example

Various new and important pieces of work I have on my desk to give you because you are so good at your job and the firm wants to promote you as soon as possible.

Various achievements for discussion at your appraisal where we will be giving you the good news that you are going to be made up to Partner forthwith even though your figures are crap.

Various benefits we can offer you along with a stonking pay rise to ensure that you do not decide to go and work for Hotshot Lawyers down the road.

Various pleasing comments that clients have made about you in the last three months.

Various pornographic pictures of women in states of undress.

And so forth.

None of that - you are just not good enough broken record stuff. 

After years and years of being a lawyer I still feel like I am winging it.

Odious little man

The business editor of our regional newspaper came into the offices today to give us a presentation. I knew that I was going to find him odious the second he walked into the room. He was one of those self important types who assumes that everyone is as deeply fascinated by the sound of his voice as he is.   

He said, “we realise we cannot just sell the business pages via pure commercial news. We need to reach out and appeal to our readership on a wider level. Hence we include items on football, gadgets and cars in all our issues to keep our readers interested”. I promise you this is true.

New dress

I would like a new dress. I don’t mean I would quite like a new dress but can do without if necessary. Or I would like a new dress but will wait patiently until my birthday when I will write a helpful list for the husband and keep my fingers crossed. I mean I would like a new dress in the way that teenage boys would like to have sex or Victoria Beckham would like a new pair of Louboutins or Osama Bin Laden would like not to be dead. I would like a new dress in a way that obscures the future from view, turns it into some sort of abstract and irrelevant concept that has no meaning. Erases the world from rational thought and blinds one to logic. Such is the power of Chloe. But I digress.

The accountant took me aside not long ago with a stern and pained expression on his face  and informed me in the severest terms that his latest household expenditure spreadsheet  showed a deficit in finances and cutbacks were necessary.

“No more clothes!” he instructed in the manner of a Victorian patriarch informing me that he would be foregoing a new greatcoat and that I likewise must reign back on petticoats. And when I protested he said "Fine, if you must buy something make sure it is from P******" (I cannot print this name for fear of being sued for what I am about to say. Perhaps I have been a lawyer for too long). "I've heard it is a great shop, everything costs about fifty pence".

"Yes," I opened my mouth for the tiniest fraction of a second, to protest, "that's quite right,  if you don't have any new fangled principles about child labour holding you back, it’s a marvellous shop!"(As I said, sued, although it can hardly be libellous if it is true, but again I digress).

But  then.....cunningly shut it again. "You need to be sensible here," a voice in my head, that I swear was not mine told me -"Fortunately for you he has never heard of Chloe ( current favourite) or Diane Von Furstenburg (2^nd in line) and if he even notices that he has never seen the new frocks that are currently as we speak winging their way to you (unlikely at best) he will be easily persuaded that they are P****** lines, discernment re quality of cut and material not being his strong point. Why waste time have a socio- political argument needlessly when you could be browsing net-a-porter?"

And on the basis that I will never buy anything from the aforementioned, anonymous high street shop my conscience is entirely clear. I do earn my own money after all.

And if he spots the related transactions on my credit card statement (horror of horrors but occasionally he claims to have opened the envelope by mistake) I may be forced into a corner where my first instinct will be, I am ashamed to admit, to advise him that net- a- porter is a new budget supermarket  that I have just discovered. Although mind you even with six children £700 is an expensive food shop, but I will cross that explanatory bridge when I come to it. And hope and pray that his French is as bad as I think it is.