I'Ll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs. The Unpublished Emails. - (9 page)

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Form

Less than an hour.  Can you just fill it out please?

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 10.42am

To: Mellissa Peters

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Form

Of course. Please find attached. I thought it would be quicker to scan and attach as a password protected .RAR file than put it on your desk. The password is Fritter. I aplogise for the delay in getting it back to you, I had to load Word, work out how to print from Word, install printer drivers for Word, reboot Word and load the typeface you used in Word, before I could print and fill it out.

I will mark the forty minutes down on my time sheets as Mellissalaneous.

Regards, David.

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From: Mellissa Peters

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 10.51am

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Form

I’m not doing your supermarket shopping for you and you’re meant to print it out not email it to me. If you email it to me I will just have to print it out. The form is for lunch from the deli down the road. Just things from there. They have sandwiches and stuff.

Mel

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 10.56am

To: Mellissa Peters

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Form

Those sandwiches sound all-right. I’ll just have one of them.

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From: Mellissa Peters

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 11.02am

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Form

Then write what you want on the form!  That’s the whole point of it. Why is it so confusing for you? Everyone else has filled out theirs.

Mel

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 11.33am

To: Mellissa Peters

Subject: Attached revised order in .EPS format

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From: Mellissa Peters

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 11.41am

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Attached revised order in .EPS format

Are you being annoying just for annoyings sake? What kind of sandwich? What do you want in it?  I’m not a mind reader. You have to write down exactly what you want. Everyone else has written down exactly what they want on theirs. I’m doing this to help you you know. Ive got better things to do with my time than get you lunch.  If you don’t want to fill out the form then you will have to go out and get your own lunch. I’m going out at 12.30

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 11.46am

To: Mellissa Peters

Subject: Re: Re: Attached revised order in .EPS format

Nice day for it.  I’d probably pop out myself for a break if I wasn’t so busy with all these forms to complete. If you are going anywhere near a hardware store, would you be able to get me a key cut? For anywhere, I don’t mind.

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From: Mellissa Peters

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 11.55am

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Attached revised order in .EPS format

Im not going anywhere near a hardware store. I’m going to get lunch for everyone at 12.30 from the shops down the road. I’m not driving anywhere.

Do you want something for lunch or not? You’ve got about 30 minutes to fill in the form or you can get your own lunch. If you just write I want a sandwich or whatever dumb shit you want without being exact then I’m not getting you anything.

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 12.27pm

To: Mellissa Peters

Subject: Attached revised order v.2 in layered .PSD format

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From: Mellissa Peters

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 12.34pm

To: David Thorne

Subject: Wasting time

You could have just written you wanted a cheese and tomato sandwich instead of wasting time doing drawings. In the time it took you could have just gone to the shop yourself.

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 12.37pm

To: Mellissa Peters

Subject: Re: Wasting time

An excellent point. To save both time and ever having to go through this process again, I will just have the same thing for lunch each day this week. That way you can use the same form.

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From: Mellissa Peters

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 12.41pm

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Re: Wasting time

No, I need a new form for each order. I write the total at the bottom of each one and add them up at the end of the week. That’s what the total box is for.

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 12.45pm

To: Mellissa Peters

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Wasting time

Not a problem. As writing ‘x5’ once on the bottom of the form would waste far too much company time, I will just email you the same file each day instead.

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From: Mellissa Peters

Date: Monday 27 February 2012 12.48pm

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wasting time

Ok.

Ten reasons I probably shouldn’t be alive: the rowboat

I quite like boats. Many years ago I wanted to buy and live on a boat but after discovering that the only kind of vessel I could afford on my budget was a second-hand rowboat,  I gave up on the dream of boat ownership and bought a book about boats instead.

A couple of years before he stabbed me in the stomach, my relative Christopher bought a large, old, wooden rowboat with proceeds raised from a homemade charity collection tin and a week of knocking on neighbours doors. I still don't understand how he got away with it for so long as both the apostrophe and letter S were missing from the words Children's Cancer, but his plan to "do up the rowboat and sell it for heaps" was nothing short of entrepreneurial genius. If Donald Trump ever hears about it he will probably say "Everyone's fucking fired, I want the rowboat guy."

Paying three hundred dollars for the rowboat, patching the holes with Plaster of Paris, and painting the whole thing white with house paint, the boat was placed in the middle of his front yard with a sign reading “4 SAIL. $1000” . When I mentioned that the word sale was spelled incorrectly, I was told that it was a clever play on words and that is why I didn’t get it.

A short time later, Christopher was arrested, on charges I won’t go into but involved the attempted sale of a large amount of copper wire to one business and the disappearance of a large amount of copper wire from another, and was sentenced to nine months in Adelaide’s Yatala prison. It was about his eighteenth offence. As Christopher rented the property he was living in and couldn’t pay the rent while incarcerated, his lease was forfeited and he was given two weeks to remove his possessions.

Being the only relative that owned a trailer, I was somehow delegated the task of removing and storing the rowboat in my shed.

Arriving early Saturday morning in order to get the task out of the way and leave the rest of my weekend free, I quickly realised that due to the weight of the boat, I should have bought someone to help me.

I was able to wobble it from side to side on its hull but unable to lift it at all. Positioning the trailer in the driveway parallel to the boat, I came up with the ingenious plan of rocking the boat from side to side until it flipped over onto the trailer, figuring I could get someone to help me drag it off once I was home.

As I began to rock the boat back and forth (A) with increasing momentum, it appeared my plan was working quite well and I managed to get it practically vertical (B) up on its side when I slipped on the grass (C)  and fell. Realising the boat was about to roll back on me, I tucked my arms to my sides and rolled away from it as quickly as possible (D), almost making it to safety, but the boat returned to its original position and, carried by it’s own momentum (E), continued its arc and flipped over onto me (F). 

Pinned face down on the grass by the two planks of wood which made up the seats inside of the boat, one across my back and the other across my legs, I was unable move. I read somewhere once about a lady who managed to lift a tree off her baby or something due to finding untapped strength under stress, or perhaps it was the power of love or something like that, but she must have been fairly fit or it must have been a little tree because regardless of how stressed I was feeling about being trapped under a boat, the boat wouldn’t budge. It probably only works if there is a baby involved or at least a much loved family pet.

After what seemed like an hour of yelling, “Help, I’m under a boat” proved futile, it dawned on me that the absolute darkness meant the boat’s weight had created a fairly solid seal rendering it relatively sound proof.

Wiggling my arms, I was able to reach into my pants pockets in search of something useful but the only items I found were my cigarettes and lighter. By twisting my arm into postions it had never been before, probably due to untapped dexterity under stress or the power of love of nicotine, I was able to edge my left hand up to my face and have a cigarette while I pondered my situation.

I actually considered using the lighter to set alight the boat, with the hope that a neighbour might see the smoke and investigate, but the thought of news reports detailing my death by burning to death under Christopher’s stupid boat caused logic to kick in and, instead, I banged the lighter against the side of the boat in three bang sequences on the off chance that someone walking past might know morse code and either rush to my rescue or call the authorities.