Days like the one she was having today always brought to mind her late fathers supposed words of wisdom that were meant, well she presumed at least, to inspire her onto bigger and better things in life: 'You can't make a diamond without pressure.' She was more of a digestive biscuit, prone to crumbling under the merest hint of pressure. The thing about diamonds she'd learned long after her father's passing is that their value, or perceived value had been created from a successful marketing campaign by Tiffany's in much the same way that 10,000 steps a day had entered into the modern zeitgeist but wasn't actually a real thing, it had originated as part of a marketing campaign for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Now they were both perceived to be 'aspirational goals' but in reality you could still fully function as a human being if you didn't own one or fulfil the other on a daily basis. Well in theory anyway. Most days her own aspirational goals were set no further than making it out of bed and then attempting not to embarrass herself over any of the remaining 24 hours in the day which upon its conclusion would mean she would be, if nothing else, another day closer to death. Every cloud and all that she'd tell herself. She also doubted very much that anyone considered her to be a fully functional human being by any known form of measurements you'd care to put her up against. Whilst many women are easily impressed by a diamond, especially those which come on a ring on a certain finger on the left hand, she however quite rightly reasoned that cut glass will sparkle in the right light and probably more impressively than any diamond you're likely to feast your eyes upon unless you're part of the 1% which her current surroundings were an easy indication that she was anything but. The main difference between humans and diamonds that she knew of and doubted anyone else ever took time in their busy lives to stop and consider was that it took an expert to spot a flawed gem whilst any old idiot could spot her flaws and you didn't need to jam one of those silly little magnifying glasses into your eye socket to notice. Maybe she should be more like Thailand which might seem an odd notion to many but she'd recently read that Americans held the belief that the country was this wonderful place to visit. This has been achieved through stealth because they'd sent over 5,000 highly trained chefs to open Thai restaurants in every pocket of the US and won the hearts and minds of its citizens who were now oblivious to its appalling human rights record, the corruption, the military dictatorships, restrictions on freedom of expression and everything else under the sun. They'd given Americans Pad Thai and in their books that made everything OK. Who needs Sportswashing when you can train a few chefs at a fraction of the cost? She just needed to find her version of the same dish to give to the world and fool them that she was equally wonderful and not a living, breathing, fucking nightmare to deal with or quite unbearable to live with in person or as a neighbour to.
At least if nothing else her father wasn't alive to tell her what a disappointment she would have grown to have become in his eyes. She'd always been a disappointment to her father from the moment the midwife had popped her head out into the corridor and said 'Congratulations Mr Prestbury you've got a little girl.' He never actually said it but the look in his eyes betrayed his true feelings. It wasn't particularly hard for the young Charlotte to figure out that he'd always wanted a son given he'd always insisted on calling her Charlie. When her mother was cross she'd get the full 'Charlotte Millicent Prestbury' treatment. To be fair to the old bugger he did at least always leave the shouting to mother, maybe for fear of going with 'Charlie Miles Prestbury go to your room!' by accident. We are of course all prone to Freudian Slips. Still she did the best she could, it wasn't her fault that her feet were tiny and she couldn't kick a ball about properly or in turn that she couldn't catch a tennis ball even when thrown gently underarm. Thankfully he never put her to the test with a cricket ball having quickly garnered his daughters limitations. A few spilt baby teeth would have seen a few spilt adult teeth from his darling wife holding his treasured Gray Nichols. She thought she'd made a breakthrough aged 8 when he'd taken her to Lords to see one of the days of a test match and he'd taught her how to score which she had really enjoyed learning. However her father had found ten hours of constant questioning too much for one man to bear and he never took her again.
On the odd day she missed her father, which admittedly was rare, she'd listen to the cricket on the radio. 'Nothing ushers in an English summer quite like the sound of leather on willow.' That was another one of his favourite sayings every year. She wished she'd been braver when he was alive and countered it with something like 'that and the sound of rain falling heavily on the window panes indicating rain stopped play,' give him a little knowing jab with an elbow to the ribs and a follow up 'Hey? Hey?' Problem was her father was never blessed with a sense of humour and you certainly didn't joke about cricket because to do so was, well… just not cricket. No, her fathers sense of humour was as much admired in the household growing up as a trait as her ability to catch a ball had been. Statistically she was more likely to catch a ball than he was to ever laugh at a joke. More people in the world have seen Halley's Comet than her father laugh at a joke and that hasn't been seen since 1986.
She was never really sure where half the things that fell out of his mouth came from. Most likely one of those work courses we all have to suffer at some point in our careers whatever industry or field that might be. Occasionally you'd find one that you'd actually come away feeling you've learned something and return back to work the next day eager to share your new found knowledge with your colleagues and their first reaction would be a derogatory 'oooo someone's been on a course.' Nothing pissed on your chips faster and brought your spirit crashing back down to earth with a bang.
She found out much later in life that there's a myriad of great comebacks to workplace idioms such as 'there's no i in team.' The polite one she'd learned was 'Yes but there's an m e.' The one she was really desperate to be the sort of woman who could use as a witty retort was 'no, but there's a u in cunt.' She suspected the day she ever vocalised that one rather than say it inside her head, was the day her father rolled over in his grave. Mind you he'd not cared during his life so it was a stretch to imagine he ever checked in ok her during his afterlife. Motivational conferences were a metaphorical ball ache in the same way as training courses were. Metaphorically speaking of course for her because she'd not been born with the balls her father had hoped she'd have. Success to her came from the more simple things in life such as putting her tights on without laddering another pair, or not walking around London for half an hour with mayo around her mouth looking like she'd partaken in a very different sort of activity than eating a sandwich during her lunch break. She'd done things that have left her feeling even more mortified in her time which hadn't been seen by a few thousand people walking down Regent Street en route back to the office. OK so maybe a few thousand was an exaggeration and even if it was say just a round thousand, most of those would have been too busy looking at their phones to notice. This didn't stop her paranoia that somewhere in Asia there were photos of her online where she'd walked into frame looking like she was sporting a cum face as a Japanese tourist snapped everything in sight like they all had the onset of early dementia and were afraid they couldn't remember what they'd seen ten minutes previously. Mind you, had they been in America they'd all probably have been taking photos of the multitude of Thai restaurants, ready to report home with evidence that their near neighbours had invaded the west by stealth which meant they were at least unlikely to start any friction with them anytime soon unlike the Chinese. You could probably easily make an American audience believe that the Chinese government has created tiny tracking devices which they've secretly put into Chicken Chow Mein and now know all of your movements. I mean that would end up in the quite literal meaning of the term movements... Loosely… You know what I mean, admit it. Fine, don't then. Just know for now at least this day wasn't going well.
It was a little past 10am and the pressure she was feeling already at work was enough to make her feel like she was cracking inside like a dozen hairline fractures in fine bone China and all it would take to smash her to pieces was the merest of taps. She wouldn't have minded if she actually enjoyed the job on any level at all but she didn't. It merely formed a means to pay the rent at the end of the month and if she was lucky put food in her belly for the first fortnight of it. She fucking hated her boss with the same level of passion her late father had for cricket and her boss was definitely someone who put the 'u' into 'you know what' as we've previously established. It would probably be less degrading a career to have to put her arse up for rent. At least that was something to fall back on if she was ever brave enough to make her true feelings about her boss known to her face which, let's be fair, wasn't likely to happen any time soon or… like… ever. Actually like most women around the world she surmised her arse was probably way too fat to be put up for rent. So she'd just have to suck it up instead, which wasn't a euphemism and definitely not something her father would have ever laughed at.
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