Five Go Glamping. Liz Tipping

blown the tea light candles out and retired to the sofa, having lots of conversations with myself about what time to go to bed or whether to stay up late and wait for Connor with another glass of wine.

      I’d chosen wine and now I also had the makings of a hangover. Not the hangover of epic proportions like I imagined Ayesha was experiencing. Ayesha’s would be monumental. I only had a dull headache with excessive carb cravings and slight dehydration from three glasses of Pinot Grigio. Three big glasses, but not quite a whole bottle.

      It wasn’t that I didn’t have a social life at all, it just wasn’t epic like Ayesha’s.

      I often went to the pub with Steph and Sinead and Kirk, but I was trying desperately to save some cash for our own place. This meant I would only ever stay for one or two drinks, taking advantage of ‘buy two glasses of wine, get the bottle free’ offers and switching to tap water to hang onto the pennies.

      But it would be worth it when Connor and I got the keys to our own place. Besides, I didn’t have Ayesha’s stamina for partying these days.

      I wondered whether I would even have the energy to go to the pub with Steph and Sinead later and thought I should probably stay in anyway as I had gone slightly over my budget for the week, splashing out on all the fancy ingredients for last night’s disastrous meal.

      And so whilst Ayesha would be at home enjoying her wonderful hangover, I was stuck at work all day with Doris. Ayesha had once said that you had to have four cats to go Full Mad Cat Lady. Doris had three. She was retiring in a couple of weeks and I was pleased she was going because a) I wouldn’t have to listen to her any more and b) I could apply for Doris’s job. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do but when I had Doris’s job I would be even closer to owning the home of my dreams. I had even begun filling out an application for her role, which asked me to match my skills with those in the job description. I don’t think anybody knew what Doris actually did, but I knew she thought she was important and I assumed from that it meant she earned significantly more money than me.

      ‘Doris, what’s your job description?’ I asked.

      ‘Oh really, Fiona. For heaven’s sake.’ I knew I wouldn’t get an answer out of her.

      She actually didn’t need to reply to me anyway. I already knew what her job description was:

      1. At random intervals exclaim defensively ‘Well, we didn’t have computers in my day’ and phone the IT people all the time.

      2. Accuse people of stealing yoghurts/biscuits/cakes/pasta salads from the fridge and insist everyone labels their own food.

      3. Steal other people’s food.

      4. Suddenly become incapable of telling the time shortly after half past one every afternoon. Say ‘Does that clock say twenty to two or twenty to three? I can never tell.’ Do this every day, without bloody fail.

      5. Say ‘I’ve been here for forty years’ to anyone who will listen.

      6. Never, ever make Fiona and Ayesha a cup of tea and when they very kindly make you one complain about some or every aspect of it.

      7. Embrace burning martyrdom by saying ‘I have to do everything’ and ‘I suppose I shall have to do it myself’.

      8. You may be required to work Saturdays paid at time and a half, even though you don’t need to as the mortgage on your massive five bed house was paid off long ago.

      ‘So do you know what my job description is then?’ I asked, knowing I was pushing it with interrupting Doris.

      ‘You ought to know what your job is after nearly fifteen years,’ she said.

      Perhaps I should know, as I had indeed been here for almost fifteen years, ever since I’d left school in fact. I rifled through my drawers to find the brown folder with all my personnel stuff in it and pulled out my original contract. The pages had yellowed a little bit and I noticed how it had been put together on a typewriter so it looked like an ancient document. I held my breath as I read the contract, hoping it would tell me that I did something exciting.

      ‘I’m an office bloody junior?’

      ‘Language, Fiona.’ said Doris.

      Surely I couldn’t still be an office junior, could I?

      But there it was, written at the top of the page.

      ‘I thought I was one of those customer services thingy people. Isn’t Ayesha the office junior now? Can you be an office junior when you are thirty? Is that even legal?’

      I shoved the contract back into the drawer and folded my arms.

      This wasn’t how I thought my life would turn out. I was fairly sure I was meant to have achieved something by now and at the least I shouldn’t be an officer junior. The career officer at school had advised me to apply for this job at Dynamic Food Processing when I’d said I wanted to cook. At the job interview I’d talked about how I loved Home Economics, and that I’d quite like to work with food, perhaps in the development centre where they developed the recipes. They’d said I would need more qualifications for that, but that there was a role in the distribution centre and I could start off there. They said I may be able to side step. But it had been nearly fifteen years now and I hadn’t stepped anywhere. I hadn’t even moved desks. I also hadn’t seen anything resembling food since I started here. By the time the food arrived for distribution, it had already been processed to within an inch of its life, dolloped into plastic containers, covered in cardboard sleeves, and packed into trucks ready to be sent off to the supermarkets.

      As well as days spent moving figures from one spreadsheet to another, I also spent time manning the customer service lines. This usually involved people ringing up and shouting at me. Doris said I spent too long on each call, but I felt it was important to listen and I had learned over the years that most people weren’t really upset with their gone off food or the microwaving instructions leaving them with a frozen lump of chicken in the middle of their meals. Most of the time they just wanted to let off steam. A burnt lasagne was the final straw for some people, the thing that tipped them over the edge. I always had the impression all they wanted was for someone to listen to. So I listened.

      I still hoped that one day I’d be moved to the food development centre where I’d spend my days inventing wonderful creations. Sadly, the only time I saw any food now was when I was manning the company’s social media accounts and people sent pictures of foreign bodies they had found in their ready meals while they shouted at me in caps lock.

      I still cooked all the time at home. Mainly because if you’d seen some of the pictures I had, you’d never eat a ready meal again.

      On Saturdays, less people wanted to complain and the phones were fairly quiet so the topic of conversation was always Doris’s cats. I knew all their names and which cat food each of them preferred. If me and Ayesha talked about anything, Doris told us off, but talking about her cats was fine, so we talked about cats a lot to avoid doing work. Today’s hot cat topic had been mange.

      As Saturday working was voluntary overtime, we were allowed to clock out when we wanted, but because I was saving I felt I had no choice but to stay and Doris knew this. I was bored out of my brain (which apparently shrinks when you are hungover) and the afternoon seemed even longer as I had taken my lunch break at eleven-thirty. I was daydreaming about what I would cook for my tea and I hoped Connor would be back to share it with me. I was starving again, so I tore open the emergency Jaffa cakes when Doris got her time blindness.

      ‘Fiona, does that clock say twenty to two or twenty to three?’ She moved her glasses up and down, blinked a few times and widened her eyes – which made her forehead wrinkle – then squinted. ‘Only, I can never tell. You’d think the least they could do was buy us girls in the corner a clock that told the time properly.’

      ‘It’s twenty to two, Doris.’ I said, for the sixth time that week. I sighed. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be really hungover like Ayesha. Or I wanted to be spending the day with the girls, or Connor if I wasn’t so cross with him.