Where the bee sucks, there suck I
She could just go. She had a meeting at two and it would take her for ever to cross London. The creatives were presenting ideas to the client for a new toothpaste. Surely there was enough toothpaste in the world already? Did people really need so much choice that they could never get to the end of choosing? As if the world needed more of anything. Yes, it was official—she was in the wrong profession. If Bertie was a god (a favourite fantasy), she would be manufacturing things there was a shortage of—bees, tigers, dormice—not flip-flops and phone covers and toothpaste. No, don’t go down that road, she thought, the creation fantasy was so vast and wide that she could be lost in it for ever.
“… monetize… materialism…”
the frost performs its secret ministry, unhelped by any wind
“… always-on consumers…”
whose woods these are I think I know
“… staggered event-related…”
loveliest of trees, the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bough
“… outcome-specific media burst…”
as kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame
“Brand-relevant content… re-energize consumers’ perceptions of the…”
On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble
“… by doing that you can take it all the way to bright…”
There’s a certain Slant of light
“… Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection…”
What?
Dear God. When did language and meaning divorce each other and decide to go their separate ways? Bertie’s ragbag of loveliness was almost depleted for the day and it wasn’t even lunchtime.
O how full of briers is this working-day world!
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said when the nervous man sitting next to her twitched. “Did I say that out loud?”
“Yes.”
She stood up rather abruptly, and whispered “Sorry” to the twitchy man. “I have to go. I just remembered I left my real self on the Tube. She’ll be wondering what’s happened. She’s lost without me.”
Angus caught sight of her and frowned as if he was trying to remember who she was. She gave him a little wave, waggling her fingers in a way which she hoped looked ironic, but it seemed to confuse him even more.
On the Tube—on the Piccadilly line, although that was probably not relevant—there was no sign of her real self, but there was a copy of the Daily Mail that someone had left behind. It was folded open to a page with a headline that blared, “Could the universe collapse TODAY? Physicists claim that risk is ‘more likely than ever and may have already started.’ ” (How on earth would you tell?) It was a curious usage of the upper case. Bertie would have put the emphasis on “collapse.” It was how Viola spoke (“You’ll be DEVASTATED”).
Rummaging around at the bottom of her ragbag for some crumb, Bertie couldn’t even find a bit of wild thyme blowing around in there.
Are you watching the Thames Pageant with Grandpa Ted?”
“Yes, I’m in his room,” her mother said.
“It’s rubbish, isn’t it? And the poor Queen, she’s almost as old as Grandpa Ted and she’s having to suffer all this.”
“She’ll catch her death in all that rain,” Viola said.
Was that what happened, Bertie wondered? Did you have to catch your death, like a runaway horse, and it took some people, like Grandpa Ted, a long time to get hold of it but others managed to grab the reins straight away? Like the grandmother she had never known—nimble-footed Nancy, jumping on the back of death, a bold rider, so quickly that she must have taken everyone by surprise. Death itself, perhaps.
“Anyway,” Bertie said, “can you put me on to Grandpa Ted?”
“He won’t understand you.”
“Just put me on anyway. Hello, Grandpa Ted. It’s Bertie here.”