benches – and an ad agency.
You could spend your whole life out here. There was a bank around the corner and a hotel. A post office. An old cemetery and a bingo hall. They’d catered for all life’s needs. You could post a letter, send money orders, play bingo. The new Dreggen was a miniature Bergen, a pocket-sized Norway with all the conveniences built in.
The first thing you notice when you enter an ad agency is that you see only young employees. You rarely see anybody over forty because they’ve become obsolete, or are drained of ideas, or can’t keep up any longer. Maybe an older grey-haired boss sits in one of the inner offices but that’s because he just happens to be a major stockholder and nobody dares ask him to leave. But that’s the only reason he’s there and he isn’t much use to himself or anybody else.
In Reception sits a young woman who’s always pretty. If she’s not, it means she’s too clever to be the receptionist, and she smiles at you. That is, she’ll smile at you if you’re under forty and you look as if you’re there on business and haven’t come to borrow money. But it’s seldom a real smile. It’s mechanical. Beautiful maybe – but mechanical. And it doesn’t last long. It’s gone before you’ve turned completely away.
All ad agencies try to look as if theirs is a ‘young, dynamic milieu’ and there are always people in trendy clothes rushing from one office to another. They wear the latest fashion in glasses and they always have a wisecrack for one of the girls who are plugged into earphones and play electric typewriters.
The men wear coloured shirts and wide striped ties; those at the creative end of things have long hair and beards and they wear jeans so you’ll know they’ve been to the Arts and Crafts Institute even though they still haven’t made their final artistic breakthrough. But its coming. Or not. When they’ve designed ads and brochures for five or six years, they cut their hair, shave and make their breakthrough by buying this year’s car and a house in Natland Terrace.
The Pallas Advertising Agency’s young dynamic milieu was in vivid red, green and brown. Green floor, red walls and brown ceiling. You entered a long narrow hall with long narrowpeople in it. The walls were hung with old beer posters from the days when it was legal to advertise beer.
The woman in Reception wore a black Afro, a kind of greenish white tunic and large gold-rimmed glasses with grey-tinted lenses. But there were no grey tints in her smile.
‘My name’s Veum,’ I said. ‘I’d like to talk to Jonas Andresen. Is he in?’
She looked at a lighted board and nodded. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ Behind the grey shadows her eyes were as blue as the sky behind today’s clouds.
‘Do I need one?’
The smile became a little strained. ‘Are you a client?’
‘In a way.’
Now the smile flashed off. ‘I’ll see,’ she said coldly. She dialled a number and spoke softly into the receiver so I wouldn’t hear what she called me. She looked up. ‘Andresen wants to know what it’s about.’
‘Say it’s personal and say it’s important.’
She said that, listened a few seconds and hung up. ‘He’ll be out in a minute.’
She forgot I was there and turned back to whatever she’d been doing with a dictaphone or a typewriter. Answered the phone several times a minute with the same gracious voice. ‘Pallas. May I help you?’
I stood and waited. Nobody asked me to sit down which was lucky. The chairs looked as if you couldn’t get out of them.
Farther down the hall a young man in light brown trousers and striped shirt was slowly showing out an older grey-haired gentleman in a tailor-made suit, in just the way you show important clients out of an ad agency when you’re finished with them.
A young woman came through a door. She had a large green folder under one arm. She walked straight towards me. A little thing with small breasts, wide hips and a pretty
You could spend your whole life out here. There was a bank around the corner and a hotel. A post office. An old cemetery and a bingo hall. They’d catered for all life’s needs. You could post a letter, send money orders, play bingo. The new Dreggen was a miniature Bergen, a pocket-sized Norway with all the conveniences built in.
The first thing you notice when you enter an ad agency is that you see only young employees. You rarely see anybody over forty because they’ve become obsolete, or are drained of ideas, or can’t keep up any longer. Maybe an older grey-haired boss sits in one of the inner offices but that’s because he just happens to be a major stockholder and nobody dares ask him to leave. But that’s the only reason he’s there and he isn’t much use to himself or anybody else.
In Reception sits a young woman who’s always pretty. If she’s not, it means she’s too clever to be the receptionist, and she smiles at you. That is, she’ll smile at you if you’re under forty and you look as if you’re there on business and haven’t come to borrow money. But it’s seldom a real smile. It’s mechanical. Beautiful maybe – but mechanical. And it doesn’t last long. It’s gone before you’ve turned completely away.
All ad agencies try to look as if theirs is a ‘young, dynamic milieu’ and there are always people in trendy clothes rushing from one office to another. They wear the latest fashion in glasses and they always have a wisecrack for one of the girls who are plugged into earphones and play electric typewriters.
The men wear coloured shirts and wide striped ties; those at the creative end of things have long hair and beards and they wear jeans so you’ll know they’ve been to the Arts and Crafts Institute even though they still haven’t made their final artistic breakthrough. But its coming. Or not. When they’ve designed ads and brochures for five or six years, they cut their hair, shave and make their breakthrough by buying this year’s car and a house in Natland Terrace.
The Pallas Advertising Agency’s young dynamic milieu was in vivid red, green and brown. Green floor, red walls and brown ceiling. You entered a long narrow hall with long narrowpeople in it. The walls were hung with old beer posters from the days when it was legal to advertise beer.
The woman in Reception wore a black Afro, a kind of greenish white tunic and large gold-rimmed glasses with grey-tinted lenses. But there were no grey tints in her smile.
‘My name’s Veum,’ I said. ‘I’d like to talk to Jonas Andresen. Is he in?’
She looked at a lighted board and nodded. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ Behind the grey shadows her eyes were as blue as the sky behind today’s clouds.
‘Do I need one?’
The smile became a little strained. ‘Are you a client?’
‘In a way.’
Now the smile flashed off. ‘I’ll see,’ she said coldly. She dialled a number and spoke softly into the receiver so I wouldn’t hear what she called me. She looked up. ‘Andresen wants to know what it’s about.’
‘Say it’s personal and say it’s important.’
She said that, listened a few seconds and hung up. ‘He’ll be out in a minute.’
She forgot I was there and turned back to whatever she’d been doing with a dictaphone or a typewriter. Answered the phone several times a minute with the same gracious voice. ‘Pallas. May I help you?’
I stood and waited. Nobody asked me to sit down which was lucky. The chairs looked as if you couldn’t get out of them.
Farther down the hall a young man in light brown trousers and striped shirt was slowly showing out an older grey-haired gentleman in a tailor-made suit, in just the way you show important clients out of an ad agency when you’re finished with them.
A young woman came through a door. She had a large green folder under one arm. She walked straight towards me. A little thing with small breasts, wide hips and a pretty
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