Ridley: Apologies for the radio silence recently, we’ve been a little absent from the blogging and twittering world. Mainly because I’m down with a cold (What’s new! I’ve the immune system of a dead person!) and Latimer is currently banned from the internet. Well…her laptop is broken. Yes, I heard the collective wince. I winced even as I typed that. I will readily admit I’m an internet addict (and a chocolate and caffeine one, we all have our vices!) so that would be hell on earth for me (and it is for her too!). You really don’t realise how often you turn on your computer until you no longer have it!
Now, you’ll have to picture her pulling out her hair and pacing furiously, while simultaneously pleading and threatening her silent blank screen. I’m just hoping the IT peoples she brought it to can recover the information on it! I’d say she’d have had to hold back the urge to not punch the IT man as he dithered over whether he could fix it. I imagine it could have gone like this, (but for the fact that she’s a nice, polite self-restrained individual):
Latimer slams in through the glass door of the shop. It’s still fairly empty, having just opened a minute and a half ago. Her feet make a scratching sound as she scurries across their grey carpet, zipping in between the aisles of empty boxes advertising anti-viral software and straight to customer service. When she reaches the white counter, a man in a yellow t-shirt has his back to her. She swings her laptop bag around and slides onto the counter top.
“Help me…please.” She whispers. “It’s broken.”
The man jumps and twists round, dropping his pen. He blinks at her sudden appearance. “Wel-welcome to the IT help desk.” He stumbles and then swoops down under the desk to pick up his biro. “How can I help you?”
Latimer frowns at him and points at the black square bag. “It’s broken. I don’t know what happened. It won’t turn on.”
“Of course, well then you’ve come to the right place. Let me take a look.” He slides the laptop out and peers at the underside of it.
“So it won’t turn on…now, you did plug it in, right?” He asks.
Latimer’s hands drop down to her sides, her fingers twitch. She narrows her eyes. “Yes.”
He nods and opens it up. “Intel pentium core processor…good…”
“Hmm hmm…” Latimer’s fingers begin to drum against her thigh.
He examines it, there’s silence for a little while. Latimer bounces on the balls of her feet.
“So…” She bites her lip. “Does it look bad, can you fix it?”
He starts mumbling to himself. ‘Well…I suppose, I could try to…but then I don’t know if that would work. Hmm…’ He scratches his head with his blue pen. Latimer’s hands curl into fists. ‘I wonder if I…’
He turns the laptop round. He jams his pen behind his ear and jabs at a few keys, frowning down in intense concentration. Latimer leans in nodding, her eyes widen. “Yes?”
After a few moments, he draws back with a shake of his head. “No, the power button isn’t the answer anyway…”
*SMACK* Latimer throws down her laptop case.
“I’ll kill you!” She leaps over the counter and shakes the man by his collar. “Fix it! Fix it, god damnit!”
“No Latimer! It’s not worth it!” (Some random person who happens to know her shouts-as I’m not there, but if I was, ’tis what I would say! haha.)
People haul her off of him. He’s unscathed, but the same can’t be said for her. The police are called. It all ends up with her rocking in the corner of a damp mouldy cell, giggling and muttering to herself. “Fix it…fix…fix…fix….I’ll fix it…”
Her one phone call is made to Ridley-not a good idea this time (is it ever a good idea? haha).
Ridley is at home, her flowery covers have been tugged up to her chin. She’s shivering and sweating in bed. There are empty tubes of Tyrozet throat lozenges littering the floor in amongst scrunched up tissue paper and tatty brown cardboard toilet rolls.
She’s randomly hollering out words in her delirium.
“Nurofen!”
“Batman!”
Ridley often gets up and wanders to the kitchen like a grumpy Lurch, peering in the cupboard for things to make her feel better and making endless cups of tea.
When she returns to her room, she peers around.
“Who put these little flashing lights in my room, they won’t turn off!”
Then she realises they’re in her eyes.
A distinct overpowering whiff of TCP wafts from her to join the smell of cooking chicken that’s drifting up from downstairs. Her mother is in the kitchen, she’s like a witch over a cauldron with a big wooden spoon. Churning and churning a bubbling broth in a large saucepan. She’s making Chicken Penicillin and she’s tossing in vegetables, spices, whole chicken carcasses and chanting about, “Bone marrow and antibodies!”
Ridley gladly accepts anything to relieve the misery. She really doesn’t remember when she swallowed the barbed wire that is now stuck in her throat.
As she feasts on her soup, and having taken more drowsy medication, her mobile beside her rings.
“Hello?” She whispers in a hoarse voice.
“Ridley! Help me, my laptop is broken! And I’m in jail!”
Ridley pulls back and peers at the number on the screen. She puts the phone back to her ear. “Who is this?”
“What do you mean, who is this? It’s Latimer! You need to get me out of here, I need to fix my computer!”
Ridley yawns, her tablets begin to kick in. “I don’t understand…my brain it’s not…Lat I can’t help right now, ‘m sorry…ring back later.”
“What!? No, wait…”
Ridley hangs up and immediately nods off.
When she wakes up. She begins to remember the dream, which involved chicken soup and a phone call. She shuffles downstairs, trying to recall its ending. There’s a reporter in the kitchen. There are also two scientists in white coats, huddling over the grubby silver saucepan and poking at a raw onion. 
“I’ve just won a prize!” Her mother beams. “I found the cure to the common cold!”
“Your mother’s made a massive break through.” The man at the kitchen table says with his head bent over his notepad.
“Has she.” Ridley nods to her mother. “Well done. Always said your soup was some good stuff.”
“Your phone keeps ringing, I just took it out of your room, as you were fast asleep and I didn’t want it to wake you.” Her mother hands her back her mobile.
“I’m sure it probably wasn’t important.” Ridley shrugs and scrolls down through the missed calls, the log shows numbers that get longer and more foreign with each hour. There are numerous text messages too.
“Ridley, I’m now in Panama. It’s quite hot here.”
2 hours later: “The Spanish is confusing me, amigo.”
7 hours later: “Could you send me sun cream?”
7 hours and 2 minutes: “Rid, how do you cure burns?”
8 hours later: “Slowly rising up the ranks, turns out one of the main mob bosses likes Lord of the Rings too. Lots in common.”
10 hours later: “Am now his right hand man…woman. Thinking of getting a tattoo. Ideas?“
12 hours later: “It’s a bit loco here at the moment, we’ve decided to stage a break out. I told them all about that one episode of ‘Prison Break’, I watched. It seemed to give them all ideas.“
15 hours later: “Success! On the way home, can you pick me up from the airport? I’ll show you my new tattoo! Arriving at 5.”
Ridley sighs and glances at the clock, it’s 4.30. Lights from a camera flash blind her. The reporter has started taking pictures of her mother holding up a soup bowl and a spoon.
“I’m going to go change. Gotta pick up Latimer.” Ridley turns to go climb back up the stairs and texts: “Fine. Going to be a little late though.”
She gets an immediate reply.
“No problem. BTW I’ve brought friends. See you in a bit 🙂 ”
“Have fun!” Her mother calls.
“Depends on your definition.” Ridley mutters.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And that, my friends, is how it all went down, in my head. Haha. Who knows what happens when I got to that airport. I was probably insanely jealous of Latimer’s great tan and cool tattoo (or horrific sun burn and hodge-podge black smudge?) Either way, fun times!
Need more sleep I think! 🙂
Thanks to freedigitalphotos.com for my pictures (except the TCP one,that’s all mine)
He stepped out to greet the crowd, “Are you all ready?” They cheered.
What does Latimer do without a laptop?
Carwicky 