While I Was Shopping: Part 2

“All I’m saying is that we don’t have to do it ourselves.” John Cleese said and rested his large hands on the back of his head.

Terry Jones looked up at him incredulously from his writing pad and gawped. “How else are we going to do it? I can’t see Ian letting us have any more money to hire more staff. They’re wondering what the hell they’ve wasted it on already!”

John shrugged. “Well we can’t very well stand around fondling each other can we?”

Eric Idle sniggered and Michael Palin ran a hand up his leg. “You don’t mind me fondling you do you Eric?”

Terry looked at them angrily across the table and they stopped touching one another and folded their arms.

“All I’m saying is that we can’t possibly afford to get models in. We’re going to have to do it this way.”

“Hang on Terry, we’re always doing it your way. Your way isn’t always the best you know.” John said, suddenly resting his forearms on the table edge.

“But you may have argued that we need a woman, or women, but you still haven’t told me how we’re going to get one and where from!” Terry said and stood up abruptly. “I’m going for some lunch. I’ll see you back here at two.” And with that he disappeared.

Michael sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I admit he’s my best friend but I sometimes can’t believe how stubborn he can be.”

John nodded. “He’s the most passionate person I know, and some things don’t really need to be gotten passionate over.”

“There’s not a way we can change his mind you know, and he is right.” Eric said. “Not one of us has come up with a solution to the problem of paying for a woman to come in.”

John grinned. “And it’s not like we want the back end of a bus playing our sex symbol. We need someone with real curves, pretty features. A woman who won’t say no and who’ll do as I command.”

Michael smirked. “Is this what your personal ad says is it? No wonder no one replies.”

John pulled a face and rocked on his chair.

“Still, we don’t want anyone interfering in the writing do we? If some woman came in and started trying to write we’d all go mad!”

Michael nodded and saw that Eric also agreed.

“So what is there that we can do then? We want a woman who wants to act for nothing and who doesn’t want to get involved with the writing process. And we only want to pay her peanuts for doing it. Is there a woman who’d do that? Judging from our wives I’d say no!” John grinned.

Michael smirked. He hadn’t got a wife so he technically didn’t know what John was talking about. Eric was nodding. Michael knew that his marriage to a model was one fraught with land mines and unforeseen difficulties. He’d even seen Eric sleeping in his car so as not to go home to her.

The door of the writing room burst open and Terry Gilliam bulldozed his way through chairs and tables and headed towards the three waiting Pythons.

Eric caught sight of John rolling his eyes and smiled. He loved Gilliam, and had done right from the start. He sometimes couldn’t believe how discriminating the others were towards him, especially Jonesy and Palin. They had been dead against him right from the first moment they met him on Do Not Adjust Your Set, but had steadily grown to love his weird animations and the strange anecdotes he would treat them to. Oddly though there were still times when they would look at him and wonder why they bothered at all, especially as he came crashing towards them with a small box, his hair covering the vast majority of his face and a silly grin plaguing it.

“What delights have you bought us today then Gill?” Eric asked as Michael folded his arms with an expression that read “what on earth?”

Gilliam plonked the box down and folded his arms with a look of sheer triumph.

“Well don’t leave us in suspense Terry, what is it?”

His throaty American voice still startled Mike every time it was uttered and as Gilliam coughed and then began to speak he found himself in awe of the wonderfully flowing accent as it spilled from his lips.

“It’s the first set of animations! I’ve done them all!”

Michael’s jaw dropped and John stared at him.

“You mean to say you’ve done all the animations already? I take it you mean for the next episode?”

Gilliam shook his head.

Eric coughed. “For the next two episodes?”

Gilliam grinned some more and shook his head.

“Come on then – how many episodes?”

Gilliam reached into the box and produced BBC tapes, waving them around. “There’s enough here for the next six episodes.” He said excitedly.

There was silence and finally Eric smiled and began to clap his hands. “Well done Gill. How did you manage to do six since the weekend?”

“I just did two all-nighters and that was it.” He said and smiled some more. “I haven’t slept in forty two hours but I don’t care because I was on a roll and I couldn’t stop. All these ideas just spilled into my head and would’ve kept me awake anyways!”

John smiled. “I know what that feels like!”

“I wish we’d got our scripts all sorted for the next six shows. We’ve only just finished the show for next week!” he pointed to Gilliam’s box. “We’d best leave that for Terry. He’ll want to see them before we put them in the show – you know how it works.”

Gilliam nodded. “Where is the old tyrant?”

John laughed. “Out to lunch right now. We’re just deciding on whether to play the female roles ourselves or to get cheap model-looking women in.”

Gilliam took a seat and cocked his head sending a spray of brown locks over his eyes.

“Well it really depends on how much you want to spend.”

Eric nodded. “We want her to work for peanuts.”

“But we don’t want the back end of a bus, if you catch our drift.” John put in.

“And we don’t want her to want to write, we just want her to be able to act.” Michael added.

Gilliam grinned and shook his head. “Impossible. No woman is going to stand for that.”

John groaned and put his hands over his face. “He’s right you know. We aren’t going to find anyone who’ll do what we want. Especially if it’s a woman.”

They sat in silence for a few moments more before Eric stood up. “I vote we go for a pub lunch, just to think this over of course.”

John stood up and followed him out. Michael motioned for Gilliam to go but he shook his head. “What about the tapes?” he asked protectively.

Mike waved his keys at Gilliam who visibly relaxed. “There’s only three of us who have keys to this place. Terry, Graham and I. So don’t worry. They’ll be safe if we leave them here ok?”

As they all headed towards the pub Michael caught sight of Terry Jones leaning against the bar with a pint and grinned. “Seems like we’ll have company for lunch.” He said and John grimaced.

“If he starts anything…”

Eric nodded. “Yeah we’ll stop you from whacking him.”

Michael laughed and pushed John into the pub, closely followed by the other two Pythons.

*************************************************************************************************************

Chelsea sat down at her desk with a sigh. Another wasted afternoon trying to understand what the hell Nigel the BBC 2 Researcher was waffling on about. She’d sat transfixed by his tie for at least two hours before realising what he was trying to say, and then when she’d finally remembered to take notes he’d tried hitting on her for what seemed the thousandth time.

Hastily leaving the research room and her meeting with a waffled excuse about graphs due in that afternoon, she’d stumbled across her boss, Kinky King Harold, waiting in a darkened corner of the plant covered corridor.

“Ah Miss Marsh. Is now a good time to discuss the reports, or are you going to hide from me again?”

Chelsea nodded glumly and followed him to his office.

Sitting in the hard back chair she felt strangely like she was back at school in the Head Teachers office, ready for a severe bollocking.

“So, these latest reports.” Harold said waving them about and looking sternly at her. “What were you thinking? Did you really think you’d get away with giving me reports, serious reports, all marked out in felt pens of gregarious colours?”

Chelsea shrugged. “It was a cry for help sir.”

Harold cocked his head. “Right….”

“I don’t like my job,” she began and Harold sniggered, “but I know there’s not a lot else I can do. So I thought why not brighten things up by using pens instead of black lines.”

Kinky King nodded. “And did you think that that would be sensible considering that these reports go straight up to the programming office? And that if they can’t read the graphs because some idiot has decided it would be fun to put them in stupid colours that are unreadable then I get some snooty arsed memo through asking me to control my staff?”

Chelsea felt small and stupid. She’d known it was going to be confrontational when she’d done it, but at the time she hadn’t cared about her job, and right now she was close to not caring about anything.
“It’s disruptive,” he said as spittle flew across the desk at her, “and it’s not conducive to the team players ethic that surrounds this office.”

There was a knock at the door and a small woman called Valerie who worked in the same office space as Chelsea poked her head around the door.

“Um, excuse me sir, but there’s an unrecorded grant request that’s just gone through our system and no one seems to know where or who it’s from or when or who performed the grant. We can only assume it was done yesterday sir, but there was only myself and Hilda in the office who could perform Grant Requests, and neither of us remember ok-ing the one from a,” she glanced at a piece of paper, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

Harold’s face crimsoned. “Someone’s done a grant request without your approval?” he asked.

Valerie nodded.

Chelsea sat very still and then felt a voice creep up from inside. “Actually that was me.”

Harold turned his scarlet face to her and she could see the blood pumping through the large vein on his forehead.

“You did what?”

Chelsea smiled genially. “I granted the request.”

Valerie smiled from the doorway. She’d always liked Chelsea and had stood up for her on many occasions when the Kinky King wanted to sack her for not doing this and that when she should have, but she knew that even this time Chelsea wouldn’t be saved.

“Why?” asked Harold, his voice a tightened strangled noise.

Chelsea shrugged. “I saw the programme on a couple of days ago and I absolutely loved it. They needed more money for this weeks show, and I wasn’t going to say no. The show is far too good to not finance accordingly.”

Harold spluttered and coughed and then stood up. Chelsea sensed that he might explode and she waited for the popping noise and then the blood and gore splatters she would no doubt acquire as her boss combusted.

“Chelsea Marsh you are fired without notice. Remove your belongings from this office at once and never step upon the floor of this office ever again or I shall be forced to have you forcibly removed.”

Chelsea had known that ultimately her actions would lead to this. She stood up and smiled at Valerie as she left the office. At the last moment she turned in the doorway and stuck two fingers up at her ex-boss.

“You are an arsehole Harold. Nobody likes your groping, your spitting or your ties. Every time your back’s turned people talk about you because you are an old molesting weirdo.”

And with that she turned around and walked confidently back to her office, knowing that if she looked back at her boss she’d run away scared that he’d come after her.

As she packed up her desk she saw Valerie return to her desk and whisper to Rachael, who looked up at Chelsea and began to clap her hands.

“Oh my God Chelsea! Well done! I would never have the courage to say what you did to Kinky. I really wouldn’t have expected it from you though. He deserves everything he gets.”

Chelsea smiled and continued to pack her belongings into a small box.

Valerie perched on the edge of her desk. “It’s going to be sad to see you go. You’re such a nice person.”

“I have to go Val, this job is driving me crazy. I’ll be sad to leave you girls though. You’re all lovely.”

Val hugged her and went to get a coffee as Chelsea picked up her box and set off towards the lift, waving a brief goodbye to the others.

The lift was typically out of order so she began the slog down the stairs, and when she burst through the main entrance of the BBC she felt a weight release itself from her shoulders. However, in the back of her mind she felt a niggling. What would she do now? She had rent to pay and shopping to buy. She had to live, but without money or a job that was going to be very hard to do.

She cast a glance around and headed towards the subway, deciding to get home to have a long hard think about her next step.

Chelsea was about to head towards the subway when a tall man bumped into her and her box flew to the floor. Groaning she knelt down on the floor to pick all her things up before they got stolen or broken.
Amazingly her mug was still intact without a chip in sight and she reached over to grab her stapler when a hand grabbed it as well.

Looking up she saw a familiar face.

“Eric isn’t it?” she asked and he smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry bout this. I was in a rush to get back to writing. I really didn’t mean to knock all your stuff out of your hands.”

Chelsea smiled. “It’s ok. It’s not important stuff anyway.”

Eric cast a glance over the items scattered about them and looked back up at her. “Moving office?”

She laughed. “More like moving jobs actually. Only I don’t have a job to move to!”

He looked slightly worried. “It wasn’t because of the grant was it? The BBC don’t exactly like to be associated with us at the moment.”

Chelsea shrugged. “It was that amongst other things. I wanted to leave really. I hated the job.”

Eric nodded as he put the last file into her box. “What will you do now?”

Again she shrugged. “Go home and think. It’ll probably be the job centre for me!”

Eric scrambled about in her box for a few moments and produced a pen and paper. “Give me your number. I might have an idea.”

Chelsea gave him her number and waved as he left, pushing the paper into his back pocket with a smile and a wave.

Heading home she sighed. Eric might have an idea but it’d probably be another desk job and she didn’t think she could handle that.

Pushing the key into her door as she finally arrived home she plonked her box down on the hall table and headed towards the kitchen.

Four glasses of Vodka later she lay down on the sofa and flicked on the TV. Four minutes later she was asleep.







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