Callie's World

Callie’s World

By Anna Pescardot

Copyright 2011 Anna Pescardot

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this eBook.

This is a work of fiction.
The names, characters and events depicted are the product of the
author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or
dead or events is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only;
however, if you have enjoyed it, please feel free to share it with
you friends.

Introduction

This ebook contains extract from the ongoing
blog “Callie’s World” (chicklitsoap.blogspot.com) and focuses on
the fictional character, Callie, who is a twenty-three year old
journalist whose job involves meeting a variety of weird and
wonderful people. Her personal life isn’t that much different.
Callie updates her blog three times a week and if you enjoy this
book you can follow Callie and read her updates in real-world time.
It is written in a chick lit versus soap opera, chatty style in the
form of blog posts and the aim is for people to think of her as a
real person, with an interesting life. I hope you enjoy.

Best Wishes,

Anna Pescardot

Callie’s World

Hi there, I'm Callie. My real name is
Caroline but, no offence if you're called Caroline; I thought it
was a little bit old-fashioned for a young twenty-three year old
journalist like myself. My best friend, Erin suggested I call
myself Callie and it just stuck. I am looking forward to getting to
know you all. I have just started working at my local newspaper and
I have such a great job (I don't know why nobody else wanted it)
meeting all the weird and wonderful people who live in my local
area and interviewing them. I get to meet all sorts, like the man
who got locked in a coin-operated public toilet for a whole night.
Apparently he was banging on the door and screaming to be let out
but if anyone did hear him they didn't report it. I can't believe
that considering it is plonked right in the middle of a busy high
street. He was only rescued when a street cleaner heard him
singing-ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall. He told me he had
to change the words to three thousand bottles of beer on the wall
he was in there for that long. Anyway he was funny. I told him that
if I was going to be locked up anywhere I would be happy as long as
there was a toilet. Imagine if you were locked in a lift and needed
to pee? I think it's time I changed the subject, don't you?

Let's talk about Erin. She phoned me up last
night having another mega trauma. Three weeks ago she moved back in
with her mum, leaving the boyfriend she'd lived with for four
years. When I asked her what he'd done to make her move out she
told me that she was having breakfast one morning and he came down
in his pyjamas and his belly was hanging over the waistband and
when he bent down to get the milk out of the fridge she could see a
bald patch at the back of his head that she hadn't noticed before.
Anyway her exact words to me were, "I just thought, Oh my god, I'm
living with a fat b****." (Insert your own word here.  Erin
swears like a trouper but children may read this.) When she first
met Adam he was quite nice looking actually. He had short brown
hair in a decent style and he had a friendly face. He wasn't skinny
but he wasn't fat either. She said that because she'd lived with
him for so long she hadn't noticed him putting on weight or losing
his hair so it was like a sudden bolt of lightening hit her and
made her see the light.

I knew he'd put on weight. We all went to a
friend's wedding a few months ago and I thought then that he was
quite lardy but it's not nice to mention it to anyone, is it?
Anyway how shallow is she, eh? I mean, through no fault of his own
(apart from stuffing his face with three big Macs each day and
washing it down with eight pints of beer, that is) she decided to
move out when he's still the nice, friendly guy he was before, only
there's more of him (less hair, though). I told her I thought she
was shallow and a total cow but she told me that once the chemistry
goes, she goes too. Anyway, it turns out that now she's back living
with her mum that she is constantly arguing with her younger
sister, Amy.  She wanted to borrow my hair straighteners
because Amy had borrowed hers and accidently broken them. How she
did that I have no idea, but Erin was having a bad hair night,
which would turn into a bad hair day today unless I lent mine to
her.  So I had to trawl half way across town and my car got a
flat tyre and I was bursting for the toilet and the only toilet
around was the one that man got locked in. Sod's law, eh? I didn't
use it. I had to phone my mum in the end. At least my car broke
down after I'd given Erin my straighteners. I don't need any more
earache from her.

I'm going to end here. I'm looking forward to
telling you all about my next assignment. This afternoon, I'm going
to see a man who has found an image of Jesus Christ in his piece of
toast. Should be exciting. I'll tell you all about it on
Wednesday.

Callie signing off,

xxx

So I went to see the miracle toast and I was
so disappointed. I don't know what I was expecting really (I'm an
optimist) but it had to be better than a childish outline drawn
with a knife. You could see the holes where the knife had gone
through the bread, and it looked more like Cheryl Cole than Jesus.
I humoured the guy anyway and took some photos of it; mainly so I
could prove to my boss that I'd been to see him and how amateurish
the whole thing was. It wasn't the man's fault, bless him. He
wasn't all there you see. Anyway, when I got back to my desk I was
hoping to have a nice quiet afternoon catching up on my admin, but
my boss called me into his office and started going mad at me,
telling me I couldn’t run the Jesus toast story now that it was
obviously a hoax. He said it would make it seem as though the
newspaper was laughing at people who weren't the full shilling. So
instead of having a nice day sat in the office I had to go out and
find something else to fill my column for next week.( Luckily Erin
knows a girl who claims to be able to win a tenner on the lottery
every week. I'm going to see her tomorrow.)

I mean what does he expect when the name of
my column is "Callie's World - Home of the weird and wonderful"This
name in itself attracts weirdos, doesn't it? And to top it all,
just as I was about to leave the office I got a phone call from PC
Ainsworth. I met him when I covered the "man trapped in toilet"
incident, and to be honest I didn't really get a good look at him,
but he was phoning to ask me out for dinner tomorrow night. I said
yes, but I've got this horrible feeling that he might be ugly.
Don't worry I'm not as shallow as Erin, but I really can't remember
him. I knew he was young, but that was as far as it went. I don't
even know his first name.  I thought about joining the police
myself but when I realized you had to use your surname a lot I
changed my mind. That's why I love my job.  I'm just Callie;
like Madonna is just Madonna. My surname is embarrassing and I am
going to keep it under wraps for as long as I can, lol. Anyway, I
said yes to PC Ainsworth because I was so stressed with the toast
thing and now I'm starting to regret it. I told Erin and she said
that she would call me during the date and if things weren't
working out then I could pretend she was calling about an emergency
and then I'd be able to leave. As if he'd fall for that one - it's
the oldest trick in the book and he's a copper; nothing will get
past him. He'll be able to find out everything about me. He might
even find out about the time I got arrested for drunken disorderly
at an ex-boyfriend's birthday party. Oh, why are things always so
complicated in my life. My sister's coming over at the weekend too.
She moved to Las Vegas when she went there on holiday, fell for a
waiter and married him. She's still with him eight months later but
I think she's getting a bit fed up now that the novelty's worn off.
She's a walking disaster zone and I don't think it will be a good
idea for me to be dating a policeman with her hanging around in the
background. I'll tell you more about her another time. I'm going to
go now but I will tell you all about lottery girl and my date with
PC Ainsworth on Friday.

Until next time,

Callie signing off

xxx

I am so glad it's Friday. I don't know what's
up with me but I feel so tired; perhaps I'm coming down with
something. Anyway, I went to see lottery girl yesterday and she was
actually really believable. She showed me her lottery tickets from
the past seven Saturdays and she'd won £10 on all of them. I asked
her what her secret was (so I could use it myself, lol) but it
wasn't so much her secret as her cat's. I saw her in action. Her
name's Molly and she's a ginger tabby.  There's nothing
special about her; she looks like any other cat but when Claire
(lottery girl) puts down her number mat, which is a large piece of
paper with numbers from 1 to 49 on it Molly's eyes go all weird,
like she is spaced out and she literally wobbles over to the mat
and first she rolls onto her back as if she's collapsed but then
she gets up and starts to walk to a number.  She sits down on
it and starts to lick her paw. At this point, Claire writes down
the number and then she does it two more times. If I hadn't seen
the proof (the winning tickets) beforehand, then I would have
probably burst out laughing but I was so impressed I memorized the
numbers so I could use them too. Anyway, I took a photo of the two
of them together, which turned out great and my boss was very
pleased with it too.  I really don't know how that cat does it
but if I win on Saturday I might consider catnapping, (is that what
they call kidnapping a cat?) lol.

I know you weren't really that interested in
hearing about lottery girl, though, were you? You want to know more
about PC Ainsworth, right? Ok then. He picked me up outside my
office and he wasn't wearing uniform so I didn't recognize him at
first (not that I'd have recognized him in uniform either for that
matter).  I wasn't entirely right when I said he might be
ugly. He wasn't gorgeous but he wasn't ugly either. He had short
mousey-brown hair which was quite a boring style but I guess you
have to have it like that in the police and he had small, quite
squinty brown eyes.  His nose was a little thin and pointy but
it went with the rest of his face somehow.  He was taller than
I'd remembered so at least I could wear my high heels when I went
out with him. My last boyfriend was the same height as me and when
I wore my heels it felt all wrong and so I had to wear flats, which
make my legs look like tree trunks.

He took me to our local salad bar, probably
thinking that a girl as slim as me (I'm being sarcastic here,
guys!) would probably only eat salad (wrong!) I was really starving
too, so I ordered the largest salad bowl I could find and I asked
for lots of ham. I felt a little embarrassed when he only ordered a
small one and then told me he was a vegetarian. I swore he was
looking at me as if I was a murderer when I was munching on the ham
chunks. I found out his first name. It's Andrew. Andy Ainsworth.
Boring name, boring person as it turns out. All he wanted to talk
about was work. I mean, I know people say policeman are married to
the job but this was ridiculous. Not only was he married to it but
he'd had children with it and had given it an eternity ring.
Usually when I'm on a date and I know it is a non-starter I at
least console myself with the fact that I'm getting a free night
out (fine wine and a nice steak etc.) but I was stuck in a tiny
salad bar eating leaves. He did ask me if I wanted to go onto a
wine bar but I didn't want to lead him on and if I started drinking
without lining my stomach with a proper meal first he would have to
arrest me for drunk and disorderly for the second time in my life,
lol.

I'm looking forward to Lila's visit this
weekend. (Notice how she got the cool name?) It turns out that she
isn't bringing her hubby. I bet she's back to stay.  I hope
she is. I would be able to get so many stories for my column if she
comes back for good. Oh, I forgot; Erin's love life has gotten more
complicated again. Remember I told you she left the boyfriend she'd
lived with for four years just because he went ugly? Well she
recently met a new man, Toby and they went out for the night and he
asked her back to his place. Now I wouldn't have done it because
I'm sweet and innocent but Erin doesn't care what people think of
her, she does what she wants so she went back with him. Anyway, it
turns out that he started to lead her down her old avenue where she
lived with Adam and he stopped outside the door of her old house
and started taking out a key.  When she asked him what he was
doing he told her he was renting from a friend.  It only turns
out that Adam is subletting their old house to someone behind
Erin's back. Anyway instead of spending the night with this new
guy, Erin went round to Adam's bedsit and basically told him she
was going to tell the mortgage company she wanted to have their old
house voluntary repossessed because she didn't like what he'd done.
Then Adam said he didn't like what she'd done by leaving him in the
first place and it got so bad that the neighbours had to call the
police. It was so weird how she found out, though. Men are way too
much trouble, I reckon. Right now I've decided I like being free
and single. I love going home to my little apartment by the river.
It's not a palace but it's home. I'm going to stay with Mum and Dad
this weekend though so I can spend time with Lila.  I will let
you know how that goes on Monday, but for now I want to wish you
all a great weekend.