by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…
The boss gets jealous, the Mangaung pot starts to boil and Phil the graphic designer wards off questions, while planning great things…
Chapter 22
In which plays are made
Dear Diary
Well, it’s getting closer. Everyone’s finalising for Mangaung. The only reason I have time today is ’cause they’re all at that Advertising and Leadership in the 21st Century crock at Sandton. And they’re only at that so they can seed the whole Hip Hop and Rural blah blah blah into the press in time. Still, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit envious. Not that I could or ever would be able to participate, but it would be good to be a fly on the wall somewhere, tucked safe in the corner. Just to see.
As far as I can tell they’ve lumped Tim and Vati together in some kind of mentorship package which will keep both of them far away from any of the action. She should feel slighted – as should he – but really they look like father and daughter going on camping trip together. It’s cute.
Gerald is picking me up this afternoon. We’re going to Monte Casino for Swan Lake on Ice. I mean, yes, I know, it’s very cheesy and all that but he really loves it and has a different sense of these things to me and I just, actually, want to spend some time with him.
I will admit that I have this feeling though that I don’t want them to see him, like he’s a parent picking me up from school. Silly, but there it is.
Suffice to say I will have my bag packed and will be waiting at reception.
Sizwe watched Tim Broadbent laughing and chatting with the fresh young intern and allowed Himself to grow jealous, even though it was obvious that this was platonic, father / daughter stuff. Still, He was surprised that after all these months not a single one of His efforts had delivered returns. In fact, now that He thought about it, He realised that she never, ever, made eye contact with Him. It was as if she was actively avoiding His very presence.
Still, such was the game. He examined the board members strutting around the Advertising and Leadership in the 21st Century buffet table, all flapping vainly around the event chicks, and then thought about what lay ahead. The South African skies were crackling with anticipation, at the excitement of the showdown. Msholozi was up against it, but then you never could tell. It was like an extended boxing match. Foreman vs Ali. Tate vs Coetzee. The hype grew day by day and only added to the fizz that now seemed to be ever present at TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande. In fact, even he had noticed that the little ones had all but stopped working. The commons was really just a mess of conversations and whiffs of dagga and cigarettes and coffee. The conversational level was as high as it had ever been. The conference was still weeks away, but people were waiting.
Yes, He felt the weight of the responsibility, but, let’s face it, these were His moments. This was why He was hired in the first place. It was His time.
He rose from His plush seat like an athlete, and prowled to the podium to warm up.
Back at the TBWSJWBN creative commons the bar had been open for hours, and the agency was gathered in small tipsy clusters, nattering. Simon Shone stood alone at the bar, sipping on an Amstel and waiting for Phil, who had ‘gone for a drive’. The mice were out for the day and while he naturally enjoyed the freedom he couldn’t help but be overcome by a growing resentment that he wasn’t a cat. That he wasn’t holed up in the Sandton Convention Centre getting ready for Mangaung, talking strategy and budget and delivery and all of that wallop.
Phil arrived at his side, bleary eyed and smiling. “Wot up?”
Simon shrugged petulantly. “Same same.”
Silence hung between them. Eventually, Simon spoke. “Tell me,” he said sarcastically, like he didn’t actually want to know at all, “what your girlfriend has to say about her stratospheric rise. I hear they’ve paired her with old turtle neck, Broadbent. That’s quite some moving for an intern.”
“She doesn’t say anything.” Phil answered blankly.
“What? Don’t tell me you two never talk work. You chat knitting? Ping Pong?”
Phil smiled like Ghandi. “Nah. I mean. Work is work. She feels the same as me. Wants to get out. Travel. Go to India. Russia.”
Simon Shone snorted and slugged on his Amstel. Typical hippie s#!t.
Simon could never have guessed at the truth – namely that most Phil / Vati conversation nowadays was of an intensely practical and tactical nature.
Tim Broadbent, Phil the graphic designer and Vatiswa Magubane had actually had more than an entertaining lunch at the Hyde Park Shopping Centre a few weeks back. Accidentally, like that rare, one-in-a-lifetime moment when you find a fifty on the floor of the parking garage, they had stumbled into a strategy: for their lives, for their careers, and for their respective and markedly different personal trajectories.
And now they were putting it into play.
Part 1 -22. Part 23: November 7.
Author: Andrew Miller Illustrator: Lebohang Goge