e Squared (58 page)

 

See you there, ravers!

 

From:
Milton Keane

To: Susi Judge-Davis-Gaultier, Dotty Podidra

Sent: 22 December 2009, 11.36

Subject: Cry for help

 

You have GOT to come tonight, girlfriends. They've only sold 15 tickets. Obviously there're no queers in Essex. What the heck was my rubbish agent thinking? There'll be tumbleweed blowing across the stage when I do my number!! Save my life. Please, please, please, please, please come!!!!

 

From:
Susi Judge-Davis-Gaultier

To: All Staff

Sent: 22 December 2009, 11.44

Subject: Interns

 

Is there an intern free to take Ted's crampons to the “honer?”

 

From:
Kazu Makino

To: Donald Gold, Bill Geddes

Sent: 22 December 2009, 11.46

Subject:

 

Plane (not Air Force 1) gets in tomorrow at 7.30am. I've promised my mum I'll meet her in Home Ware at M&S for a mind-numbing Christmas-present splurge. Managed to negotiate myself a 90-minute lunch furlough before she drags me back to Suburban Family Hell (AKA Surrey). Fancy hooking up for a bite? I have bribes: White House china. Only a few items, but over time and with enough trips home, I can build it up to a complete dinner service.

 

From:
Harvey Harvey

To: Liam OKeefe

Sent: 22 December 2009, 11.48

Subject:

 

Hi Liam. I'm very nervous about tomorrow. Have you got the rings yet? And my psychiatrist is coming. He wanted to be my best man because we do go back such a long way, so he might be a bit funny with you. Also, Comfort wants to know if Lorraine will be happy wearing a traditional Nigerian bridesmaid's dress.

 

From:
Liam O'Keefe

To: Harvey Harvey

Sent: 22 December 2009, 12.03

Subject: Re:

 

No, Harvey, let me explain. Again. *You* buy the rings. My job as best man is simply to look after them for you. Don't worry about your shrink. I've got some top psychiatry jokes in my speech that will put him at ease. And Lorraine will wear pretty much anything, so long as it doesn't involve peepholes.

 

From:
Donald Gold

To: Kazu Makino

Sent: 22 December 2009, 12.05

Subject: Re:

 

Hooray!! Lunch with my heroine, Kaz! I'll get us into the Ivy. They'll surely bump some no-name Britain's Got Talent reject for a member of the First Lady's personal staff. Hurry up and get here.

 

From:
Liam O'Keefe

To: Creative Department

Sent: 22 December 2009, 12.18

Subject: The Big Night Out

 

As if I need to remind you, I'm hosting Double H's Literal Stag Do tonight. Tailored to his highly specific brief, here is the evening's thrilling itinerary:

NB1: No shooting, garrotting, cudgeling or otherwise harming the deer, Zlatan. They belong to the Queen, and she will have you beheaded. She still blames your lot for kicking off WW1 and she wouldn't bat an eyelid.

 

NB2: Unless one happens to be taking a shortcut through the park on her way home after a hard night's writhing to music at Spearmint Rhino, we will see no strippers tonight.

 

It's going to be an educational blast, people. Personally I can't wait.

 

Liam

 

From:
Janice Crutton

To: Beverly Crutton, Sarah Franks, Geraldine Crutton and 17 others ...

Sent: 22 December 2009, 12.21

 

Subject: The Crutton Chronicles, Volume 9 [continued]

Last and least, me! I'm near the end of my maternity leave, so after Christmas I'll focus on recruiting a nanny. Hopefully there won't be a repeat of the Tamara experience when her first word was something that would get you imprisoned in the Philippines! Ideally I'd like a nice French girl so that Petra Rosebud has a head start on a useful second language. Seriously, many of the tots round here are fully bi- and even tri-lingual by the time they get to nursery! I suspect, though, that I'll have to pay a premium for French and will end up with Czech.
C'est la vie,
as they don't say in Brno! And then it's back to work, where I suspect the Crossrail negotiations are exactly where I left them four months ago.

 

One piece of sad news. After 18 years and about 5,000 sacks of lams, Courtney passed away in October.

 

I've attached a pic of the four of us (plus my bump) on our recession-conscious holiday in Devon. Strangely, apart from the rain and the stodgy food, it was exactly like Tuscany—full of London lawyers and media types!

 

That's all from us. I hope you're all well. And I wish you wonderful Christmases and moderately prosperous New Years.

 

All our love,

 

Janice, David, Noah, Tamara & Petra Rosebud xxxxx

 

From:
Pertti Van Helden

To: Janice Crutton

Sent: 22 December 2009. 12.22

Subject:

 

Christmas is comed and the gooses is getting stuffed! I very exciting about your imminating arrival. I invite the whole thirty-seven of the Van Helden extending family to join for a Christmas Eve feasting to celebrate the present of my top English friends. Tell to David also that I arrange the special journey to Ivalo. I make appointment for doctor which marinade him in the reindeer shits. It is treatment to make miracle cure of scars in the face and also hand areas. I have one thing I must ask. Is Tamara the normal teenager liking the dancing? If you tell me yes I am arrange her go tanhukurssi. It is the special course to make dance in the Finland folk style.

 

I have make many of the incredulous plans for your trip and I am explosive with the thrillingness.

 

From:
Janice Crutton

To: David Crutton

Cc: Dotty Podidra

Sent: 22 December 2009, 12.26

Subject: Final warning

 

You have four minutes to get out of the office.

 

Dotty, please remind him about the Sudocrem. And have a lovely Christmas.

 

From:
Dotty Podidra

To: David Crutton

Sent: 22 December 2009, 12.27

Subject: Janice

 

Just checking you saw her e-mail?

 

From:
David Crutton

To: Dotty Podidra