And on top of all that, it’s Polka Dot’s sales conference tomorrow. Fun times ahoy.
TO DO:
Block book accommodation locally – work out how many rooms we’ll need
Make sure nicest rooms are reserved for Rowland & Fenella (Thom’s boss and the wife)
Ceremony music – string quartet playing some Billy Joel?
Start taking skin vitamins
November 30th
Holy moly! I know Sales teams are notoriously tough but I was not expecting that.
For a company of thirty people (only ten of which are full-time), our ‘sales conference’ is really only a white wall, a projector and some presentations in a room over the Stuck Pig pub on the corner. It’s normally fairly high-spirited, as the people who don’t usually work in an office together break out of their cabin-fever and socialise with distant colleagues. Plus we had fresh blood in the form of Judy the Intern, keeping us on our toes as we all tried to behave like proper publishers. The bar staff come up every thirty minutes or so to top up our drinks, so by 3.30 it’s usually pretty ugly, but this year the drinks had been flowing faster than usual and the Sales team really had it in for our books. They’re a cynical bunch, hardened by years on the road without colleagues and convinced they are the lifeblood of Polka Dot, and they refuse to pull their punches when talking about our titles. It’s probably the only chance they’ll have to blow off some steam about books they may find are not their cups of tea – and normally nobody minds, since it does seem like quite a thankless task to explain to a bookshop owner how much they need the 500th incarnation of Angel Hamsters or I’ll Eat my Greens if You Don’t Lock Me in the Shed Again, Mummy – but there was something in the air this year which made them much meaner than anything I’d seen before. Simon, self-proclaimed ‘sales genius’ and completely hammered, was declaiming to the room about some of the garbage he had to sell (never nice for an editor to hear; they clamp their lips and pretend they’re thinking of something else), reeling off nasty joke after nasty joke about Jacki until I was digging my fingernails into my palms – just ignore him and he’ll shut up – when he suddenly laid into AutobiogRaffy. Laborious as the publishing of a niche memoir may be, that book is Carol’s baby and Simon really went to town on it, listing all the ways in which it was going to bomb. Carol’s face was getting redder and redder, but she didn’t say a word, just walked to the corner of the room, helped herself to a biscuit then busied herself tidying the books on the table at which Simon was perched.
Then Simon said, ‘And books like that aren’t helped by having past-it clueless old jokes like Norman working our numbers in the back office.’ Carol turned to him for a moment, her face suddenly pale, before rearing back and pronouncing in her immaculate RP, ‘Simon, you really are an absolutely unbearable cunt.’ Carol then immediately burst into tears and Simon stood up, red-faced but un-bowed, still determined to prove once and for all that he was a prick. His audience turned away as one, and resolutely studied their printouts until Simon stopped drunkenly blustering and vomited down his Ted Baker suit. Carol kept crying until Judy led her away to the toilets and Tony declared we should probably leave it there for the day.
Dan from the Art team, eyes slightly boggling, turned to me and Alice and said, ‘So that Carol – Norman thing is out in the open now?’ I squealed, and demanded to know how he knew. He said that after work one night, Norman had asked his opinion on the necklace he’d bought for Carol’s birthday, but sworn Dan to secrecy. I have got to start working late.
TO DO:
Find out if Redhood Farm have all their own tables, chairs, chair covers
If not, look at rental prices for furniture that matches our colour scheme
Pick a colour scheme
First dance – choreograph?
Clothes for ushers and best man – suits, ties, boutonnières, shoes, socks (forbid bright fashion/novelty socks) (unless in line with colour scheme)
Organise tastings for wedding cake at different bakeries
Arrange swearbox for Carol at the reception
December’s Classic Wedding!
Grace went out and bought a hat, and dressing for her wedding consisted in putting on this hat. As the occasion was so momentous she took a long time, trying it a little more to the right, to the left, to the back. While pretty in itself, a pretty little object, it was strangely unbecoming to her rather large, beautiful face. Nanny fussed about the room in a rustle of tissue paper.
‘Like this, Nan?’
‘Quite nice.’
‘Darling, you’re not looking. Or like this?’
‘I don’t see much difference.’ Deep sigh.
‘Darling! What a sigh!’
‘Yes, well I can’t say this is the sort of wedding I’d hoped for.’
‘I know. It’s a shame, but there you are. The war.’
‘A foreigner.’
‘But such a blissful one. Oh dear, oh dear, this hat. What is wrong with it d’you think?’
‘Very nice indeed, I expect, but then I always liked Mr Hugh.’
‘Hughie is bliss too, of course, but he went off.’
‘He went to fight for King and Country, dear.’
‘Well, Charles-Edouard is going to fight for President and Country. I don’t see much difference except that he is marrying me first. Oh darling, this hat. It’s not quite right, is it?’
‘Never mind, dear, nobody’s going to look at you.’
‘On my wedding day?’
The Blessing
Nancy Mitford
Dinner at my parents’ tonight. Mum and Dad’s house is nice – it makes me feel like a child again – but is also dreadful, because it makes me feel like a child again. So I can kick my shoes off and lie flat out on the sofa, watching the TV sideways, but it means too that everything about it bothers me: the fussy lampshades, the boring wallpaper, the general porridgeness of it. Dad’s added some nice touches since he’s been working at the college and got to know the local arts community – there are vases and pictures where before there were only terrible satin-finish school photos of Susie and me – but I still feel it’s basically the house that taste forgot. It’s not ugly, it’s just … dull. It makes me want to paint my house daffodil yellow and fuchsia, only because it’s not the 1960s anymore, no one can actually afford a house around here. I’m just waiting for my parents and Susie to die, and I’ll be laughing. (After the funerals, of course.)
Mum had made her supremely delicious chicken tagine with four hundred different spices (you know I love you, Mum; although it’s not entirely because you’re an amazing cook, that really doesn’t hurt) and it looked like we were about to make it all the way through the main course without anyone mentioning the wedding. Then Mum said: ‘Kiki darling, have you thought about letting me make your wedding dress? We can go through my old patterns to find