Catch-up Callie

Hi there, I'm Callie. My real name is Caroline but, no offence if you're called Caroline, I thought it was a little bit old-fashioned for a young twenty-three year old journalist like myself.  My best friend, Erin suggested I call myself Callie and it just stuck.  I am looking forward to getting to know you all.  I have just started working at my local newspaper and I have such a great job (I don't know why nobody else wanted it) meeting all the weird and wonderful people who live in my local area and interviewing them.  I get to meet all sorts, like the man who got locked in a coin-operated public toilet for a whole night.  Apparently he was banging on the door and screaming to be let out but if anyone did hear him they didn't report it.I can't believe that really considering it is plonked right in the middle of a busy high street.  He was only rescued when a street cleaner heard him singing  ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall. He told me he had to change the words to three thousand bottles of beer on the wall he was in there for that long. Anyway he was funny.  I told him that if I was going to be locked up anywhere I would be happy as long as there was a toilet.  Imagine if you were locked in a lift and needed to pee? I think it's time I changed the subject, don't you? Let's talk about Erin.  She phoned me up last night having another mega trauma.  Three weeks ago she moved back in with her mum, leaving the boyfriend she'd lived with for four years.  When I asked her what he'd done to make her move out she told me that she was having breakfast one morning and he came down in his pyjamas and his belly was hanging over the waistband and when he bent down to get the milk out of the fridge she could see a bald patch at the back of his head that she hadn't noticed before. Anyway her exact words to me were, "I just thought, Oh my god, I'm living with a fat b****." (insert your own word here.  Erin swears like a trouper but children may accidently read this) When she first met Adam he was quite nice looking actually.  He had short brown hair in a decent style and he had a friendly face. He wasn't skinny but he wasn't fat either. She said that because she'd lived with him so long she hadn't noticed him putting on weight or losing his hair but it was like a sudden bolt of lightening hit her and made her see the light. I knew he'd put on weight.  We all went to a friend's wedding a few months ago and I thought then that he was quite lardy but it's not nice to mention it to anyone, is it? Anyway how shallow is she, eh? I mean, through no fault of his own (apart from stuffing his face with three big macs each day and washing it down with eight pints of beer, that is) she moved out when he's still the nice, friendly guy he was before, only there's more of him (less hair, though). I told her I thought she was shallow and a total cow but she told me that once the chemistry goes, she goes too. Anyway, it turns out that now she's back living with her mum that she is constantly arguing with her younger sister, Amy.  She wanted to borrow my hair straighteners because Amy had borrowed them and accidently broken them.  How she did that I have no idea, but Erin was having a bad hair night, which would turn into a bad hair day today unless I lent mine to her.  So I had to trawl half way across town and my car got a flat tyre and I was bursting for the toilet and the only toilet around was the one that man got locked in. Sod's law, eh? I didn't use it. I had to phone my mum in the end.  At least my car broke down after I'd given Erin my straighteners. I don't need any more earache from her.
I'm going to end here.  I'm looking forward to telling you all about my next assignment.  This afternoon, I'm going to see a man who has found an image of Jesus Christ in his piece of toast. Should be exciting.  I'll tell you all about it on Wednesday.

Callie signing off,

xxx

WEDNESDAY

So I went to see the miracle toast and I was so disappointed. I don't know what I was expecting really (I'm an optimist) but it had to be better than a childish outline drawn with a knife.  You could see the holes where the knife had gone through the bread, and it looked more like Cheryl Cole than Jesus.  I humoured the guy anyway and took some photos of it; mainly so I could prove to my boss that I'd been to see him and how amateurish the whole thing was.  It wasn't the man's fault, bless him.  He wasn't all there you see.  Anyway, when I got back to my desk I was hoping to have a nice quiet afternoon catching up on my admin but my boss called me into his office and started going mad at me, telling me I coudn't run the Jesus toast story now that it was obviously a hoax.  He said it would make it seem as though the newspaper was laughing at people who weren't the full shilling.  So instead of having a nice day sat in the office I had to go out and find something else to fill my column for next week.( Luckily Erin knows a girl who claims to be able to win a tenner on the lottery every week. I'm going to see her tomorrow.)
I mean what does he expect when the name of my column is "Callie's World - Home of the weird and wonderful"  This name in itself attracts weirdos doesn't it? And to top it all, just as I was about to leave the office I got a phone call from PC Ainsworth.  I met him when I covered the "man trapped in toilet" incident, and to be honest I didn't really get a good look at him, but he was phoning to ask me out for dinner tomorrow night.  I said yes, but I've got this horrible feeling that he might be ugly.  Don't worry I'm not as shallow as Erin, but I really can't remember him.  I knew he was young, but that was as far as it went.  I don't even know his first name.  I thought about joining the police myself but when I realised you had to use your surname a lot I changed my mind.  That's why I love my job.  I'm just Callie; like Madonna is just Madonna.  My surname is embarassing and I am going to keep it under wraps for as long as I can, lol. Anyway, I said yes to PC Ainsworth because I was so stressed with the toast thing and now I'm starting to regret it.  I told Erin and she said that she would call me during the date and if things weren't working out then I could pretend she was calling about an emergency and then I'd be able to leave.  As if he'd fall for that one - it's the oldest trick in the book and he's a copper; nothing will get past him.  He'll be able to find out everything about me.  He might even find out about the time I got arrested for drunken disorderly at an ex-boyfriend's birthday party. Oh, why are things always so complicated in my life. My sister's coming over at the weekend too.  She moved to Las Vegas when she went there on holiday, fell for a waiter and married him . She's still with him eight months later but I think she's getting a bit fed up now that the novelty's worn off. She's a walking disaster zone and I don't think it will be a good idea for me to be dating a policeman with her hanging around in the background. I'll tell you more about her another time.  I'm going to go now but I will tell you all about lottery girl and my date with PC Ainsworth on Friday.
Until next time,

Callie signing off

xxx

FRIDAY

I am so glad it's Friday.  I don't know what's up with me but I feel so tired; perhaps I'm coming down with something. Anyway, I went to see lottery girl yesterday and she was actually really believable.  She showed me her lottery tickets from the past seven Saturdays and she'd won £10 on all of them.  I asked her what her secret was (so I could use it myself, lol) but it wasn't so much her secret as her cat's.  I saw her in action.  Her name's Molly and she's a ginger tabby.  There's nothing special about her; she looks like any other cat but when Claire (lottery girl) puts down her number mat, which is a large piece of paper with numbers from 1 to 49 on it Molly's eyes go all weird, like she is spaced out and she literally wobbles over to the mat and first she rolls onto her back as if she's collapsed but then she gets up and starts to walk to a number.  She sits down on it and starts to lick her paw. At this point, Claire writes down the number and then she does it two more times.  If I hadn't seen the proof (the winning tickets) beforehand, then I would have probably burst out laughing but I was so impressed I memorized the numbers so I could use them too.  Anway I took a photo of the two of them together, which turned out great and my boss was very pleased with it too.  I really don't know how that cat does it but if I win on Saturday I might consider catnapping, (is that what they call kidnapping a cat?) lol.
I know you weren't really that interested in hearing about lottery girl, though, were you? You want to know more about PC Ainsworth, right? Ok then.  He picked me up outside my office and he wasn't wearing uniform so I didn't recognize him at first (not that I'd have recognized him in uniform either for that matter).  I wasn't entirely right when I said he might be ugly.  He wasn't gorgeous but he wasn't ugly either.  He had short mousey-brown hair which was quite a boring style but I guess you have to have it like that in the police and he had small, quite squinty brown eyes.  His nose was a little thin and pointy but it went with the rest of his face somehow.  He was taller than I'd remembered so at least I could wear my high heels when I went out with him.  My last boyfriend was the same height as me and when I wore my heels it felt all wrong and so I had to wear flats, which make my legs look like tree trunks.
He took me to our local salad bar, probably thinking that a girl as slim as me (I'm being sarcastic here, guys!) would probably only eat salad (wrong!). I was really starving too so I ordered the largest salad bowl I could find and I asked for lots of ham.  I felt a little embarrassed when he only ordered a small one and then told me he was a vegetarian. I swore he was looking at me as if I was a murderer when I was munching on the ham chunks.  I found out his first name.  It's Andrew. Andy Ainsworth.  Boring name, boring person as it turns out.  All he wanted to talk about was work.  I mean, I know people say policeman are married to the job but this was ridiculous.  Not only was he married to it but he'd had children with it and had given it an eternity ring.  Usually when I I'm on a date and I know it is a non-starter I at least console myself with the fact that I'm getting a free night out (fine wine and a nice steak etc.) but I was stuck in a tiny salad bar eating leaves.  He did ask me if I wanted to go onto a wine bar but I didn't want to lead him on and if I started drinking without lining my stomach with a proper meal first he would have to arrest me for drunk and disorderly for the second time in my life, lol.
I'm looking forward to Lila's visit this weekend. (Notice how she got the cool name?) It turns out that she isn't bringing her hubby.  I bet she's back to stay.  I hope she is.  I would be able to get so many stories for my column if she comes back for good. Oh, I forgot; Erin's love life has gotten more complicated again.  Remember I told you she left her boyfriend she'd lived with for four years just because he went ugly? Well she recently met a new man, Toby and they went out for the night and he asked her back to his place. Now I wouldn't have done it because I'm sweet and innocent but Erin doesn't care what people think of her, she does what she wants so she went back with him.  Anyway, it turns out that he started to lead her down her old avenue where she lived with Adam and he stopped outside the door of her old house and started taking out a key.  When she asked him what he was doing he told her he was renting from a friend.  It only turns out that Adam is subletting their old house to someone behind Erin's back.  Anyway instead of spending the night with this new guy Erin went round to Adam's bedsit and basically told him she was going to tell the mortgage company she wanted to have their old house voluntary repossessed because she didn't like what he'd done.  Then Adam said he didn't like what she'd done by leaving him in the first place and it got so bad that the neighbours had to call the police. It was so weird how she found out, though. Men are way too much trouble, I reckon.  Right now I've decided I like being free and single. I love going home to my little apartment by the river. It's not a palace but it's home. I'm going to stay with Mum and Dad this weekend though so I can spend time with Lila.  I will let you know how that goes on Monday, but for now I want to wish you all a great weekend.



Callie signing off

xxx
















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