She speaks slower still, as though I am an idiot. ‘But … they are all the same.’
‘That one is a slightly different hue, I believe,’ I say, quieter.
She peers at the croissants. The person behind me in the queue comes forward for a look, too. The barista abandons the Gaggia and comes over. The cashier. They all look, and then they all stare at me.
‘It was a preference really,’ I whisper. ‘Please, just put any croissant in a bag.’
She puts the croissant in a paper bag. It hits the bottom with a ding. I press my card on the reader and will it to bleep. Bleep for Chrissakes, bleep fucking fuckbud fucker.
It bleeps. I pelt.
I run into the Ladies, sling the croissant in the bin and have a short cry. It’s fine, though. People cry in WerkHaus all the time. They have these little soundproofed booths near reception for private calls, but mostly people just use them for crying in.
When I’m done crying I take a piss. As I wipe, I check for blood, as always.
I look at my phone.
PASTRIES
The sentiment remains the same, even if the truth has turned out differently. And it’s the sentiment that counts.
PASTRIES
In a way, it’s perfect. Factual. But I’m still not 100 per cent. I recall something Suzy Brambles once said in her ‘Incontrovertible Gram Tips’. She said: ‘Go with your first draft.’
I change the words back to:
PASTRIES, WOO! #PASTRIES
Right. I feel almost ready to go on this. As a final check, I text Kelly.
Kelly is my oldest friend and most trusted social media editor.
Pls will you check one thing for me before I post
No no I said no more of this
Please
No, you’re driving me mad with this daily bombardment
It’s not every day!
Mate, it’s most days
Please I’m having the worst day already!!!! I was just served a defective pastry
No
I beg of you
I am not endorsing this behaviour
What behaviour???
This lunacy. I don’t think it’s healthy. Or authentic
Authentic???
You said that we ‘grew up together’ in a post the other day. We were 22 when we met
It made a better story! Anyway we almost did, in that we both grew up in the North!
WTF
Charlie Chaplin once lost a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition
DOUBLE WTF
Well we inevitably put a filter on ourselves, don’t we? Even as honest people moving through society
Stop intellectualising your problem. Life is not a lookalike competition
Just sent you the post, pls review and feed back
FFS
She’ll read it. I know she will. She doesn’t do much while she’s waiting for her receptionist shift to start – other than watching blackhead-removal videos, which I think somehow give her a sense of universal equilibrium being restored.
She replies after a few seconds:
It’s fine. Really don’t know what you were concerned about
Thank you x
I bestow a kiss! I hope she really feels that ‘thank you’. My politeness-verging-on-grace. Then after a few seconds I send:
I hope you took time to really consider it and didn’t just rush off an answer?
She doesn’t reply.
She does that sometimes, Kelly. Shuts down. She did a much bigger version when I was getting together with my ex, Art – back in those heady days of hard wooing – and I asked her to check the things I was sending him. Sometimes you just need a second opinion, you know? What are friends for?
Kelly’s from the North, too. She’s Yorkshire. The white rose to my red. She’s an angel in my lifetime but she has started to publicly undermine me and to be honest it’s starting to grate. Example: last week I posted a photo of a leaf-covered bench in the park with the words:
Autumn, you’ve always been my favourite
and she commented:
Do you think liking autumn makes you a more complex person?
A few days later I posted a charming vista of a field and she wrote,
Mate, there’s nothing in this picture
It’s not the kind of thing you expect from a beloved friend. BUT – if you had to ask me who knew me best, who loved me best, who I loved best – well, I do know what the answer would be. Kelly thrills me, it’s as simple as that. She thrills me. We might have drifted apart a bit of late, but we have the kind of friendship that can weather emotional distance. It’s very easy-come, easy-go. Like an open marriage.
Kelly has a son, Sonny. I’ve known them twelve years, although technically I met Sonny first. He’s fourteen now. Kelly got pregnant with her university ex, whom she told me she swiftly outgrew. He now has a baby with another woman and is a proper truck-blocking activist. He and Kelly once stayed up a tree for six weeks, while she was pregnant, and I think it was during that time she realised the relationship was really over. It’s going to be a make-or-break holiday when you’re crapping in a carrier bag and arguing about who has more snacks left because there’s no electronic entertainment. Kelly still has a star tattoo on her wrist from when she used to be an anarchist. (She never turned down a cheeseboard, though. I think you often find that with anarchists – they still like the small comforts.)
The last time I saw Sonny, a couple of months ago, I told him to stop looking at girls with long fake nails on Instagram because they were emulating porn stars. He said I was nail-shaming them. He told me his friend pressed the wrong button on a vending machine in America and got the morning-after pill instead of a drink, so what did I have to teach him? People are depressed about the totalitarian state we’re heading towards – a world where our internet use will be restricted to viewing the shiny, ham-like faces of our unelected leaders – but at least it will save the kids from porn. Every cloud.
I’ve told Kelly that we have to respect social media more than the younger generations because we’re not digital natives. We were raised in print. This shift has been a major cultural and psychological upheaval in our lifetimes. We didn’t get email until we were at university. The internet can throw some curveballs. I once ordered a bureau off eBay and when it arrived it was a miniature one, for a doll’s house. I thought it was a bargain at £1.99. Plus, we weren’t brought up natural broadcasters. We’ve had to catch up, and too quickly. I remember that move towards daily (hourly; constant) documentation. Years ago a friend drove me mad on a hike, stopping to take photos all the time for her Facebook. I was very frustrated, as I wanted to keep walking. It was like being in a constantly stalling car. Now, I’d be the one scrambling to the nearest cliff face for a signal.
Speaking of which.
It’s time to bite the bullet. I add a last-minute impulse hashtag. Really going now!
#shameabouttheservice
I post the picture. The waiting begins. It’s like that conundrum of the tree falling in the empty forest. Does it make a sound if there’s no one there? If you put something