Verity is finally back in the village – though I’m not sure exactly how long she’ll be around – full of tales of Spanish woe and London excitement. She dropped round for coffee, bringing with her a box of the biscuits she’d bought at the deli.
“They’re rather good,” she said, dunking a chocolate cherry cookie into her coffee. “I didn’t know you had it in you!”
I did point out that she didn’t need to buy them, I could easily make a few extra for her.
“That’s not good business practice! This way you make an extra sale, a little extra money, and the three people behind me in the queue in the deli heard me singing their praises. The biscuits, that is, not the people in the queue... Anyway, who knows, they might have bought some too!”
I had to concede the point and she continued to fill me in on Max and Spanish hospitals and the parties she’d been to in London in the last few days.
“Spanish hospitals are very clean,” she admitted, “but they all speak Spanish.”
This should not have come as a surprise to her. “Didn’t anyone speak English?” I knew Verity only spoke the one language fluently, and I didn’t think Max’s business Spanish ran to ‘my pee bag needs changing’.
“Well, sort of, but never the first person you found, and even when you did find one, they had a strong accent.”
This seemed a somewhat unfair criticism but there was no telling Verity. The biggest thing in favour of Spanish hospitals, it seemed, was the lack of large wards, but maybe Max had ended up in a private hospital. It would certainly explain why it had all cost so much.
“And the party last night!” Verity went on, full of excitement. “It was all to do with that charity I’m involved with, you know the one, it was technically a fundraising do with canapés and champagne at £50 a head, plus a raffle and a tombola and so on, but I was chatting to the social secretary and she’s asked me to join the events committee. Lots of do’s to be organised at places like the Savoy, maybe a chance to be in the second circle at next year’s wedding –”
“What wedding?” I interrupted.
“Will and Kate’s, of course.” She gave me a pitying look. I’d brought it on myself, I suppose. I don’t really see the wedding as having much impact on life here in the village. Verity sees things rather differently.
Unsurprisingly, she had to dash. She leads a very exotic life at times. But we have our own little dramas. There was a phone call later from an angry advertiser about the newsletter.
“I haven’t received a copy of this month’s newsletter!” they rumbled down the phone. “I’m supposed to get a copy of each issue my ad is in!”
I flicked through the latest issue and told them that their ad wasn’t in this month’s, so that would be why they hadn’t received a copy.
“Well, I’m paid up until January, so now I expect an ad in February too. You can’t just not run my ad because you don’t feel like it.”
I got the impression that they’d been annoyed by something else previously, because I couldn’t quite see why they would be so angry about a missing ad in one month’s edition, but I assured them I would look into it and adjust our records accordingly. Naturally, when I checked the records, if you can dignify the collection of bits of paper that I have with such a title, the advertiser was only half right. They’d paid up to January but they’d indicated that they didn’t want an ad in November’s issue. I’m going to wait until tomorrow to let them know, though. Give them a chance to calm down a bit.
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