A Day in the Life
by G & T
‘We're number 42 in the list,’ said the lawyer.
The client groaned, ‘We'll be here all day.’
An hour later they were on their respective ways. The
lawyer able to tick another item off the to-do list and the client left slightly
dazed in the city streets wondering how it could only take a couple of minutes
to legally annul a marriage.
The truth is the knot had probably been unravelling for a
long time and may not have been properly tied in the first place.
§§§§§§§§§§
Back at her desk, the lawyer hung up the phone.
‘Bloody hell, not again,’ she said. And then, ‘Fuck!’ just to let
the beautiful rainbow streaming out of the scaffolded but still rather phallic
tower of the Paddington Town Hall know that she meant it.
Normally it was her parents who were the target of her
invective which is understandable when you think that they gave her a boy's name
when it was quite obvious to almost everyone that she was a girl. This
time the less than lady-like language was induced by her having received what
she had long ago labelled as the ‘Othello speech’ from a good friend.
The Othello scenario goes something like this:
‘Boy meets girl. Romance is born. It is
beautiful.
Enter David who is running around being herself, bubbling
like a bottle of champagne to which the maker has added too much sugar at the
beginning. For some reason the girl looking on to this scene thinks that
when the cork holding back the latent energy pops off, her boy will sip at the
sweet contents within. She is far from sweetly content. To cut the
crap, she thinks David is going to bonk her boy.’
It doesn't pay to be cheerful in this life.
§§§§§§§§§§
‘Got a call for you from England, David - it's Anna
again’
Anna had already confirmed her return flight to England
when the call came through from her fiancé - ‘Sorry, dear, but I've been
fucking someone else for three months’.
Anna had been back in Australia for three months, restoring
her suntan and sanity after spending four years in England entirely because her
‘boyfriend’ was there studying.
She still flew back to England because he said it was over
with the other woman and he loved Anna and what he could he do and he was sorry.
When she got there it turned out he couldn't live without
the other woman and what could he do and he was sorry and that he'd put his eggs
in the other woman's basket.
Anna left him a $1000 phone bill and a basket full of
rotten eggs. After all he'd left her with a shattered heart and four
wasted years.
§§§§§§§§§§
The client sat in front of David and said, ‘I have a
Family Law problem’.
‘Yes,’ said David.
‘Yesterday, I took the contents of the home I own with my
husband onto the oval out the back and burned the lot’.
§§§§§§§§§§
Another client sat in front of David and said, ‘I have a
Family Law problem’.
'Yes,’ said David.
‘Last week I used a Power of Attorney signed by my
husband to sell the home we own together. I sold it to an Arab who paid
$200,000 cash for it. I then flew to Melbourne and blew the lot at the
races.’
§§§§§§§§§§
At 1:00 David thought, ‘Lunchtime at last!’ and,
grabbing her wallet, was just about to dash out the door, when one of her
alcoholic clients walked in.
For once she was quite happy to see him as she had been
scouring Hyde Park and half the pubs on William Street for him for the last
month. Settlement of his purchase of a bachelor's pad was supposed to have
taken place a week ago. Fortunately the other Solicitors hadn't woken up
to this fact yet or she would have been forced to say she had misplaced her
client somewhere in Darlinghurst.
‘George,’ said David, ‘I'm just going out - come with
me to the bank and we'll withdraw cheques from your account so you can buy your
new apartment’. George stormed into her office, placed the beer belly
which was protruding from his polyester Hawaiian shirt on her desk, and said,
‘Only after we talk business’.
David sat down with a sigh.
George pulled out a grimy bandanna in which were wrapped
his valued possessions and carefully extracted two cards. He threw the
first, his drivers licence, onto the desk. ‘Sue them for half a
million’.
David studiously wrote on her note-pad ‘Sue Roads and
Traffic Authority for $500,000’. ‘Right, got that,’ she said to
George, ‘Anything else or can we go to the bank?’
‘Sue them for $2 million,’ yelled George thrusting a
Kings Cross parking station ticket across the desk. With her best effort
at an appearance of considered thoughtfulness David said jotting on the pad
‘Sue Kings Cross parking station for $2 million’. Then, ‘Right
George, off we go to the bank now OK ?’
‘No,’ frothed George. He rummaged in his torn
Qantas airways bag and deliberately pulled out a roll of masking tape,
‘Everyone in this office will die!’
‘What a tragedy,’ interposed David thinking that it
might actually be a relief at that particular point in time.
‘Unless I bless the office,’ George finished his
sentence, strode across David's office, and very carefully placed a large
masking tape cross on the glass portion of the door. With a huge toothless
grin, he turned to David and proudly said, ‘I've saved you’.
‘Thank you George, now, about the bank. We need
those cheques this afternoon. Let's go’.
‘One more thing!’ screamed George, his stomach wobbling
like a big bowl of jelly, ‘I have something for you. Your secretary
never takes your messages does she?’ he said as he extracted from his bag a
piece of cardboard which looked as though it had been run over by every Oxford
Street bus that morning. With his trusty roll of masking tape he stuck the
grotty thing on the wall and scrawled with a flourish ‘Leave messages here’.
§§§§§§§§§§
For those who may be wondering, they did make it to the
bank where they discovered the usual lunchtime queue. George decided to
entertain the crowd with a little conversation aimed at no one in particular but
in a voice loud enough for the entire bank to hear.
Pointing at David but addressing the crowd at large, he
said, ‘This is my solicitor. She works at Cold, Beverage & Ice.
Isn't she beautiful. Her boss stole $30,000 of my money and spent it on
the three dollar wheel but she's OK’.
Directing his delightful breath at David he said, ‘Gees
you're beautiful. will you marry me? It'd be really good for me’.
David responded in an equally loud but rather more coherent
voice, ‘It'd be really shocking for me, George’.
But the fun and games really started when they finally got
to the teller who was on his first day at the job and who showed some reluctance
to give $150, 000.00 to a babbling, toothless drunk and his ‘fiancée’.
§§§§§§§§§§
The afternoon presented its usual mixture of clients
without appointments dropping in to cut their children out of their wills or
wanting Apprehended Domestic Violence Orders, people claiming to be Saddam
Hussein's wife and the occasional quiet moment when David actually got some work
done.
§§§§§§§§§§§
At 6:30 p.m. David threw in the towel and decided to go
home. Her careful consideration of the Times crossword on the bus was
rudely interrupted by a torrent of abuse from someone she recognised as a
Yugoslav friend (she hadn't yet dared ask which part of the ex-Yugoslavia this
particular friend was from).
Along with Afrikaans, the Slavic languages would have to be
the best languages in the world in which to swear. Although she couldn't
understand a word, the vehement juxtaposition of irate sounding noises left her
in no doubt. Nina was not happy.
From the English words which Nina only seemed to use when
the bus was stationary so all the other passengers could be her witness, David
gathered that once again she was being accused of stealing someone's lover.
This time another woman.
After getting off the bus at the first available
opportunity David went over the events of the previous evening. Nothing
had happened, but when Nina's partner Jane had suggested a midnight walk along
the beach with David after Nina was gone home, David's alarm bells should have
been ringing.
For David, if had been an ordinary, every-day
run-of-the-mill walk but apparently Jane had gone home and told Nina that she
had been within a hair's breadth of being unfaithful to her.
David thought to herself, ‘It doesn't pay to be cheerful
in this life. Particularly to gay people whose partners are more than
happy to abuse you on the bus on the way home’.
§§§§§§§§§§
David was relaxing at a friend's cocktail party, relieved
to be among people who would only tell her at length about their life problems
instead of expecting her to solve them.
Wandering in the grounds or the large harbourside mansion
where the party was being held, David noticed a tennis racquet leaning languidly
against the fence of the tennis court. Both racquet and fence were coated
in a film of red dust which had been brought up by tropical rain and pounding
feet from the surface of the court.
David was wondering whether a tennis racquet could even be
languid when a most gorgeous creature glided into the view. So stunning
was her beauty, that David stopped thinking about the idiots who had forgotten
to put lime in her gin and tonic to watch her every move.
With the lithe movements of a dancer, the stranger fingered
the tennis racquet thoughtfully and David saw that she had no idea what it was.
So she walked up and said in the most syrupy tone she could muster ‘Gin &
Tonic darling?’
The stranger looked David up and down, her eyes hesitating
slightly in disapproval at the lime green bike shorts smeared with grease, her
eyebrows locking together in horror as she noticed that the shorts were teamed
up with a T-shirt in a colour that can only be described as ‘international
signal orange’.
‘There aren't any limes, but at least there's ice,’
David said.
Silence was the reply. Thinking that there was no
point in asking the stranger if she were a deaf-mute, David said ‘I do a
wonderful dry Martini if you would prefer that’.
‘What is this?’ the stranger asked eventually.
‘That,’ David said, ‘Is a cocktail shaker’,
thinking that she was talking about the large stainless steel container which
was in the shape of Queen Victoria's bust.
‘No this, you fool,’ she said waving the tennis racquet
rather menacingly in David's direction.
‘Now that,’ David replied, ‘Is a guitar. Would
you like me to play it for you?’
‘Sure’
So she grabbed it and did a passable vocal rendition of the
guitar solo from Shine on You Crazy Diamond.
§§§§§§§§§§
David said to her gin & tonic as she watched the
stranger's slender form disappear hurriedly down the wide avenue of trees,
‘What a pity she doesn't like Pink Floyd or Gin. I would take offence if
I were you.’
She didn't give the G&T a chance to reply but slammed it down with a lack of decorum that would have made the ‘Solo Man’ proud and said, ‘You're lucky you're a drink because we humans - those of us who aren't insane - are bastards’.
