The Happiness Recipe

w/c 5 March

Monday

Show me someone in London who loves a Monday morning and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t take public transport, doesn’t work at NMN Advertising, and doesn’t make ads for Fletchers pizzas; pizzas that you wouldn’t feed to a dog. Not unless you’d been having an ongoing Mafia feud with that dog and his entire family for several generations. Even then you’d probably only feed that dog a single mouthful of pizza before taking pity on him and reaching for the Pedigree Chum.

This morning the tube was delayed, so I was delayed, and by the time I reach the glass revolving doors of NMN, just off Charlotte Street, it’s already 7.34 a.m. Free breakfast, courtesy of NMN, runs strictly from 6.30 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. Free breakfast is one of the few perks still left in this office. Obviously there’s no such thing as a free breakfast and these breakfasts are a trap, designed to lure you in to work prematurely. However (and it is an important however): Sam, Head of The Post Room, has proved beyond doubt that the egg and bacon croissants NMN use as bait are worth coming in early for.

For a bloke who’s spent ten years dossing around in a mail room, Sam’s remarkably good with computers. Last summer he was so bored, he created an interactive 3D model on his Mac. He programmed in all the variables:

 Croissant Induced Happiness versus Joys of a Longer Lie-in

 Relative Density of Commuters on the Northern Line 06:00 to 08:00

 Financial and Emotional Costs of an Inferior Breakfast from Somewhere Else

Then he did some sums and an A3 colour printout: the croissants won. I had never even considered putting egg mayo and bacon into a croissant. Fried egg and bacon between two slices of a fresh white sandwich loaf? Sure, that’s a classic. But egg and bacon crammed into a seductively flaky French buttery croissant with melted cheese on top? If I were Robbie Doggett, NMN’s Head of Creative Thinking (and King of Trying to Be Down With the Kids even though he’s forty-nine), I’d say OMG, or hashtag ooh la la brekkie.

I don’t say either. I’m thirty-six, I don’t txtspk out loud, I don’t wear £200 customised Nikes and I don’t spend all day Tweeting shite. I would simply say ‘great croissants’; but I can’t, because it’s four minutes past the freebie and they’ve been removed. Instead I head for the mail room.

Sam’s sitting in his swivel chair wearing his favourite Bowie t-shirt and distressed jeans. (‘Distressed’, due to the fact that he’s worn them constantly since 1993; unlike Robbie Doggett’s jeans, which are made to look distressed by a team of under-age Cambodian fabric workers who are, I suspect, genuinely distressed.)

‘Seven letters, spice from crocus …’ Sam says, looking up from the crossword and giving me a brief once over. Sam is annoyingly cute: green eyes, light brown wavy hair, and a permanently amused smile that’s the result of him being privy to every last thing that goes on in this agency. It’s a good job he’s lazy, rude and smokes all day, which work against his natural attractions and mean I don’t have to fancy him. Much.

‘Hold on, I know it, Sam, I do … nutmeg?’

‘One letter short.’ He shakes his head in mock disapproval. ‘And there’s me thinking you might be hungry …’ He points his finger at a stash of goodies hiding under a paper napkin on his desk.

‘You saved one for me! You can be such a charmer …’

‘I didn’t save one for you, I saved one for whoever solves eight across,’ he says. ‘Come on, Suze, sixth letter’s an O, you’re always good on the food questions …’

‘O … o … Saffron. It’s saffron.’

He nods, then slides his chair over to the pile of goodies and whips the napkin away like a toreador. Not only has he saved me a croissant, he’s also snaffled a chocolate muffin. Best of all, he’s ordered in some of those nice Muji fibre-tip pens that are strictly contraband in our new cost-cutting regime, and a brand new pack of turquoise Post-it notes!

This is what my life has come to: elation over a pack of stolen Post-it notes. (It’s been a bad couple of years.) I could almost hug him, but Sam doesn’t do touching at all – unlike every other man in this building who does far too much touching.

‘Thanks Sam, I owe you.’

‘Yeah, yeah … just bring me in some of that chocolate pudding next time you make it.’

‘Which one? The roulade?’

‘Which one’s that?’ he says.

‘Round, in slices, had raspberries in it last time.’

‘Oh no, not interested in fruit. The one with the brownie bits on top.’

‘Ultimate death-by-brownie cheesecake bake?’

‘Yep.’

‘You didn’t think it was too sweet?’

‘No, it was good. Death by brownie. Good way to die. Better than car crash or drowning.’

‘Happy Monday to you too.’

Monday morning means updating The Status Report:

w/c 5th March

 ‘Project F’ – client briefing – venue TBC

 Brief creative team

I live my life in w/cs. Week commencings.

For example, I know that w/c 23rd April we will be shooting our new TV ad for ‘Project F’ whether I like it or not. And I do not.

Devron from Fletchers is briefing me tomorrow. We haven’t even started the project yet, but according to the timing plan we’re already two months late. Devron keeps changing his mind about the brief. It’s probably going to end in disaster, but hey – ‘Tight deadlines are what keep this business fun!’ That’s according to my boss, Berenice: a woman whose idea of fun is Excel. Excel the spreadsheet, not ExCel the conference centre, though she is a woman who loves an industry conference. Networking is one of her middle names: Berenice Robot-Psychopath Networking Davis.

Which reminds me, w/c 4 June I’m being roped in to The Tasty Snacking Show, again. Last year Fletchers forced me into fancy dress to publicise their new ‘Pizza Spagnola!’ range. Words can’t describe the humiliation of getting stuck in the ticket barrier at Earl’s Court tube dressed as a Spanish sausage. Take my word for it, there’s no obvious place to stick an Oyster card when you’re a chorizo.

W/c 16 July – a week in Centre Parcs Cumbria to brainstorm Christmas 2015.

W/c 3 September, birthday week – I shall be on holiday, somewhere hot, preferably with a man but more than likely with Dalia. (That’s if I can persuade her to be parted from her on-off-off boyfriend for long enough to board a plane.)

W/c 17 December – get my bonus, pay off my debts and finally get promoted to the board, thus proving to my parents that I am not a failure and I am not a quitter. Then quit. Work out my three-month notice period in a state of sheer unadulterated bliss, every day a rainbow. Release myself into the free world just in time for spring and start doing what I was put on this earth to do. (I’ll have worked out what that is by then. Definitely.)

My whole life spent, living in the future.

The one good thing about Mondays? They go fast.

The hours are eaten up by a sequence of pointless, infuriating, navel-gazing meetings:

Team Meeting, Floor Meeting, Department Meeting, Production Meeting and finally Meeting-Planning Meeting. Yes. Just when you think it’s safe to go back to your desk at 6.30 p.m., the account directors have a meeting just to talk about the rest of the week’s meetings. Still, tonight we’re finished by 7 p.m., and I race out of the door before Berenice can make her usual hi-larious joke – ‘half day, Susannah?’

With any luck Upstairs Caspar will be out for the night. If it wasn’t for Caspar my home would be perfect. I live in a cosy one-bed flat on the fifth floor of Peartree Court, a six-storey U-shaped block with a little square of garden in the middle, with, yes, a tree, with pears on. It’s in Swiss Cottage, a pleasant area of North London that is not remotely Swiss, nor full of cottages. The flat belonged to my granny, who left it to me and my brother when she died seven years ago. My brother now lives in a big house in Chester where his wife is from. I give him half the mortgage equivalent every month and I get to live here.

Peartree Court is looked after by Terry the Caretaker. If he wasn’t in his sixties and missing two important front teeth we’d be in business. He’s a total sweetheart – he’s even given me a secret key to the roof terrace. It has amazing views of the whole of London. Residents aren’t supposed to go up there – health and safety. But as long as I’m discreet and don’t let myself get spotted by the busybody Langdons on the third floor then Terry’s fine. (The Langdons actually complain every autumn when the pears start to fall from the tree. They don’t like the mess of everyday life. Then again, who does?)

Terry’s kind to all the old people in the block and tolerant of all the 4x4 driving yuppies who move in every time one of the oldies kicks the bucket. Yuppies like Caspar. Love thy neighbour’s not working out too well for us. Caspar moved in just over a year ago. He is an actuary. I don’t actuary know what this means, other than that at thirty-one he can afford two cars (Porsche, Range Rover) and has enough free time to play a lot of tennis. I frequently bump into him in the lift in mini-shorts, thinking he’s Nadal. Except unlike Nadal, Caspar is pasty, blond and snotty. Grand-slam snotty.

I know this because two weeks after my ex, Jake, ripped out my heart, Caspar ripped up his carpets, installing tropical hardwood flooring instead. Due to the acoustics of this flooring I hear Caspar flob up whatever’s in his throat every single morning at dawn, like vulgar birdsong. Caspar spent four years in Hong Kong and he informs me that in Chinese culture it is a good thing to loudly hack up one’s phlegm. Good for him; not so much for me.

Along with the coughing there’s the shagging – his, not mine, obviously. Never optimum to hear your neighbours getting it on. But Caspar’s sex life … it’s so terribly audible. And it’s always the same routine: Michael Bublé goes on the Bang & Olufsen. Then I hear Caspar bang and olufsen. I’ve repeatedly asked him to at least put some rugs down, but he tells me that my ears are too sensitive. So now I’ve resorted to whacking up the volume on my Adele CD – it’s that or else I hear everything.

The only part of his routine that ever changes is the girl. He has a taste for drippy blondes, and because he’s a rich, cocky little bugger he seems to have no trouble pulling. Sometimes I see him strut to his Porsche, an interchangeable girl scurrying a few metres behind him like an obedient little mouse. I never ever want to go out with a man who marches ahead of me down the street.

Tonight I’m in luck: Caspar’s out, which means some peace. I head straight for the kitchen: the only thing that can undo the damage to my soul that a Monday at work has done is a good dinner. The cupboards in here are a bit of a mess – I’m rubbish at throwing things away – but behind the Hobnob tubes and huddles of geriatric spices I find exactly what I’m looking for.

My grandma always told me that a bowl of pasta is the answer to most of life’s problems. She was Italian. Statements like that always sound a little more profound in a foreign language: Un piatto di pasta e’ la risposta a quasi tutti i problemi della vita. All you have to do is pick the right pasta for your circumstances. For example, tonight I’m tired and feeling lazy. So nothing too complicated: a tomato-based sauce, thirty minutes’ cooking time, max. However today, being Monday, was dull, so I’m craving a little lift. The solution? A bit of chilli in the sauce, and a pasta shape that conjures up excitement: fusilli. Lovely and twirly, like a kids’ fairground ride.

I check in the fridge and find a pack of bacon that’s a week past its use by date. My mum brought me up to believe that a use by date is arbitrary – a random sequence of numbers and letters, designed to trick you into throwing good food away before its time. It might as well be in Cyrillic. If it looks fine and it smells fine then it is fine.

I fry a red onion in butter and olive oil till it’s soft and starting to turn golden, then add the bacon and a pinch of red chilli flakes and stand over the saucepan inhaling like a teenage glue-sniffer. After five minutes I pour in a tin of tomatoes, a pinch of salt and sugar, reduce the heat to a low simmer and head to my bathroom.

Make-up comes off, I have a bath and I even manage to apply a Liz Earle nourishing face mask, which promises to brighten my tired, dull complexion. If only Liz could make a potion to brighten the other parts of my tired, dull existence …

OK. Pyjamas: on. Baggy, slightly moth-bitten cashmere sweater: on. Horrendous yet cosy Ninja Turtle slippers, a gift from my brother in 1987: on (I’m serious – I never throw anything away). Pan of salted water for the pasta: on.

Eleven minutes later – absolute happiness. Twirly pasta with a spicy tomato and bacon sauce with loads of melted cheese on top. Eaten on the sofa in front of an episode of 30 Rock. Just me, Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin.

My grandma was right about the pasta. My mother was right about those use by dates. And all is right in my world.