Mondays were generally the worst. I mean it wasn't like we had enough problems dealing with the start of the week… like all human cogs in the urban wheel of consumerism. It's just that Adrian, our resident 'off the wall' creative, had a tendency to take Mondays, somewhat brutally, from the real…to the sublime. Fuelled, in the majority, by the last vestiges (if we were lucky) of a chemically enhanced weekend.
He was a genius but more than a little loose around the edges. Indeed, one of Adrian's halcyon moments was his personal contribution to the Legalise Marijuana debate, which consisted of chartering a DC10 from an old Vietnam pilot and flying it over the central and east North Island to randomly distribute five tons of enriched hemp seed...
The police didn't like that very much.
Adrian's descent into madness was a bit like watching the ink on a keyboard disappear …slowly and with an immutable sense of impending doom - each passing moment leading to loss …and confusion.
This Monday was no exception.
The wip started well. The bagels were warm and the coffee so thick you could eat it with a teaspoon. We were working our way round the room, each agency warrior explaining what they were up to for the week. Yet fifteen minutes in, thirty seconds was all it took to relegate all that had been said, unceremoniously, to the mists of time.
First the lights went off, plunging us into that that particular brand of twilight associated with the beginning of a week. Then a strobe light began flicking its actinic fingers into our Mondayed eyes …and dry ice began curling its way across the floor. All to the dulcet tones of an old Chemical Brothers song...
'Oh Jesus, here we go again' John, the resident suit muttered.
A rather drawn out crescendo ensued and everything in the room stopped. The strobe ceased, plunging the room once more into darkness. Within seconds, a flash of light so bright it would have put Aliens to shame struck our already overloaded pupils, and the smoke miraculously vanished like it was being sucked out by an industrial vacuum cleaner... powered by fan from an aerospace wind tunnel, (unfortunately, this was not outside the bounds of possibility with Adrian). There in the middle of the room, curled in a foetal position, a bit like when Arnie appeared in the second Terminator movie …was a gorilla.
Well, actually, we suspected it was Adrian dressed as a gorilla, but you never can tell with him. It could very well have been a real one. Purloined from one of his Russian shipping mates.
Now, a gorilla would have scraped in on its own, in the grand scheme of things, but Adrian had somehow also managed to fit the gorilla into his favorite Armani suit, which was now looking more like a cheap prop from a chinese kung fu movie. Not only that the Gorilla was cradling a goldfish bowl filled with blue and green M&M's which it then started throwing into the air, catching them, somehow... in its mouth.
"Morning all! What a great day this is going to be!" announced the gorilla round a mouthful of splintered candy and chocolate. " Who's up for a game of chess?"
That was when things just got a little bit too much for Audrey, our accounts lady. Who, while appearing to be the nicest person in the world to the uninitiated, had a temper like Gordon Ramsey on speed. Fuck with Audrey and your days were numbered in fractions.
[Our clients knew and respected this, we never had a bad debt and all of them paid on time. Some even in advance.]
So, Audrey gently settles her cup on the chair, takes a slow breath, gets up and walks slowly toward the gorilla in the centre of the room. We all shrink as far as possible into whatever corners and voids we can find.
"You know Adrian" says Audrey, in a quiet and measured voice, (clearly designed to lull us all into a false sense of security.) "I start the day at 6am. Badly. Each morning I am woken by my kids dancing in the lounge to either High Five or the fucking Wiggles. I get them breakfast and I haul my husband's sorry ass out of bed so he can catch his train. I make the kid's lunches while drinking a cup of cold coffee...
"I drop my children off at school while doing my hair and makeup in the car mirror. I get to work and I…" (it was about now that the volume began to rise) "…look forward to engaging with adults, with people who don't speak in pidgin english and can hold a conversation for longer than 30 seconds before saying 'I want'! …I look forward to talking with people who have something useful to contribute to my reality. With people who don't smear their lunch over their faces! I consider it to be about the only thing that keeps me sane in the domestic circus that is currently my home-life. It is something that if I didn't have… I would spend my evenings rocking in a chair and pulling my hair out strand by fucking strand. It is something I value more than food. More than sex and more than soap. So, I ask you, with the greatest of respect… what in the great name of Fuck are you doing!!? Have I mistakenly taken the wrong turning this morning and ended up having breakfast in a ZOO Adrian!?!
"No. No I think not.
"I have turned up for work expecting to get some sense from others about what they will be doing this week. This in turn will allow me to plan my days, safe in the knowledge that they WILL turn out according to some semblance of consensual reality! Not a scene from a deranged after party that maybe your lounge on any given fucking night! Adrian… I do not have time for this… get the fuck out of that ridiculous suit, sit down and try participating in this discussion like something approaching a sentient, if not sober, human being… or I will rip those M&Ms from your hands and shove each and every one of them up your arsehole before feeding you to Henry!"
(Henry was our resident studio dog. He was awesome. Everyone loved Henry. He was normal in every possible way except for one slightly disconcerting fact. He had a thing for women's underwear. We had to warn our female clients in advance, never to go to the toilet without first checking for Henry…)
There was an awkward silence.
It was about then that I grabbed my coffee and ran for the studio.
I can still hear the screams.
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