Today I was ambushed.
Ambushed by an Online Editor with more brightly-coloured clothing than tact.
It wasn't just an ambush, it was a double-cross, much like the ones you'd read about in our Dialogue Espionage Classics: The Kremlin's Geordie Spy and Operation Garbo and Snow, for example.
You see, Holly Smith and I are that unique breed of office-dweller who consider one another friends. Rather than colleagues, that is. Nothing worse than being called a colleague by someone you work with who you thought was a friend:
Office-dweller 1: "Meet my colleague, Katy Scholes."
Office-dweller 2: [Don't let it show, don't let it show how much that hurt] "Hi! I'm a collea... KATY. I'm a Katy," [Seamless. God you're good.]
I digress. Yesterday my so-called friend and I went to the shoppes.
In the shoppes I found a denim shirt that made me look like a particularly rugged lady painter and decorator. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside, y'might say. A good look, I'm sure you'll agree. When I slipped it on and twisted and turned on my toes to admire myself holding on to my shirt-front as one does when being narcisistic, Holly, without accosting, turned to me and said: "you look like Chessy from The Parent Trap."
This is Chessy.
I'd have rather she'd have said: "Look, I'm sorry, it's just... I see you as more of a colleague." At least then there would have been more of an explanation for the break-up of our friendship.
Obviously, ignoring her advice and completely conviced that I looked like Debbie Harry but cooler, I bought my beloved shirt.
Today I arrived in the office. I walked over to where my friend-but-hanging-by-a-thread sits and said good morning, confident in the way the arms of my new lady shirt rolled and stayed perfectly put just below the elbow. Holly looked at my ankles and slowly dragged her gaze up my person, her eyes widening the further North she travelled. Her eyes met mine. They were peeled and protruding. She tried to regain some control by pushing her glasses back on her nose, but before she took a breath she blurted: "YOU'RE WEARING DOUBLE-DENIM."
"These aren't denim jeans, they're jeggings."
"They're denim."
"No seriously, they're not."
Ella kindly intervenes: "Turn around." She has a fiddle. Pulls out a label. "Super-stretch jeans!"
Cue tweets and office banter which even resulted in one of my (many) seniors calling me into his office, picking up his phone and saying: "Oh, Katy, it's the 80s, they want their clothes back." Thanks again for that, Shane.
IT'S 100% COTTON, PEOPLE. C'MON!