That Duran Duran Moment – Sandra 7

[For back story see lower numbers in archive]

Somewhere there would be good news, if only Sandra looked for it carefully enough. Right now she was looking for it at the bottom of a bowl of nearly finished chocolate chip cookie mix, but it was a start. This was, she told herself, a great way to boost her morale, to start the day with a sugar boost (alongside the caffeine boost) (and OK the cooking bit was alright as well) and that alone would power her forward to tackle whatever the day held.

And the day was looking pretty good on the whole. Fantastic, one might say. The gradual dropping of lockdown, the promise of workplaces opening further, of shops – real life actual shops – being open, even if you had to queue for everything, even if you had to continually look on the floor to check how far away you were from anyone else; even if you were always going to be looking at the person serving you through a perspex sheet it was, she told herself, good news. She got on well with just about everyone at her local deli, the baristas and patisserie makers and recommenders were always ace for a gossip, but faced with the idea of now doing that with a perspex sheet between them, like they were old style bank customer facing people, sent something of a shiver up her spine.

Frankie had been reassuring over this. “It’s the new normal,” she said. “The thing about the new normal is that it is normal. Remember when all this started? How entirely stupid, bizarre and weird the whole thing was? And now look at us.”

Look at us indeed, thought Sandra as she reached for a teaspoon, the better to get the remaining chocolate mix scrapes from the corner of the bowl. Thanks to her well appointed kitchen she could get the teaspoon without getting up. Well appointed, she wondered, or was it essentially sad that she’d rearranged the drawer’s content after she’d been in this state before so that in the future she wouldn’t have to get up from the floor?

Look at us indeed, Sandra thought again as she looked across to where her phone had skimmed to, underneath the sink unit. Not a bad flick that, she thought. Didn’t know my foot had that much power in it to make it go so far. Guessing it still works.

Next up on the agenda for today was the case of Crown Apps – the company her new work mate Daniel was trying to get in front of as many people as possible and whom she’d sort of helped, sort of not by getting them in front of a load of other app developers. Well, there was no such thing as bad advertising she thought. And then she thought of all the times when there actually had been.

And then she thought of seeing whether the cookies she had already put in the oven to cook were already too hot to whip out and just start eating as they were since the diminishing returns from scraping the bowl had pretty much entirely diminished.

Today Crown Apps would get some proper coverage from some proper press. She, Sandra Xanadu Dedbury would secure not one, not two, but three top line interviews for Daniel with top line editors and writers for top line business magazines. And then, stuff it, just to show how damn fantastic she was, she’d get a broad sheet business editor on the hook, line and sinker as well and get Crown Apps plastered across their main page. 

Look at us, she thought. Adaptable, unassailable, built to last and ready for anything. The Dedburys, from a long line of illustrious, fantastic and successful artisans, business people, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and…

And why the hell had that cretin of a brother-in-law had to massacre everything? Why could he not see that the beauty of everything they had lay in how it was arranged, the inter-relationships, the fact that they got on so well, that they still got on so well, that they got on so well because they weren’t actually together. Sending her text messages almost every two hours was not in character, would not change a damn thing, was not on, would not win her over or make her push over the fantastic structure of the current generation of Dedburys. She would not betray her sister, her generation, her family, anyone. 

IM GONNA TELL FRANKIE I LOVE YOU X he’d texted.

DONT. I DONT LOVE YOU. She’d texted back.

I KNOW YOU DO X

I WILL DENY IT. YOU WILL NOT HURT ME

I DONT WANT TO HURT YOU. WILL HURT YOUR SISTER THO. X

Look at us, thought Sandra, just look at this mess.

Frankie had found a song for this occasion, she thought. It was an old song, one from before they were born, but it was still good and apt. She found it now and Spotified it now through her loudest bluetooth speakers. And so having screamed the lyrics to the chorus of ‘Ordinary World’ by Duran Duran across her kitchen and into her study, Sandra Xanadu Dedbury sat down and got the hell on with her fantastic day.