Bob and Margaret, "Love's Labours Lost"

While listening to the radio, Bob observes his charmless young assistant Penny, inspiring him to recite odes about youth and innocence. Bob over hears on the radiophone in, a teenage caller, in love with her boss, and hears her being encouraged to open her heart to him. Penny comes in to Bob and starts beating about the bush. Bob thinking about the phone in show, is surprised when Penny states "more money, or I go to work at a florist shop". Bob stands firm, insisting that he rescued Penny from the dole queue. Penny insists that she was not even in the queue, she was waiting with a friend, and storms off to work at the florist. Panic stricken without his "right hand", he calls Margaret, who agrees to take time off from the verucca epidemic that is assailing her chiropody practice, to come and help him. While Penny alienates the florist's customers with her trademark brusque manner, Bob and Margaret are bickering about the way Margaret is answering the phone, how she keeps her hair, and whether or not she is passing the correct tool to Bob. The surgery is chaotic, with appointments messed up and arguing patients. Bob entices Penny back with a pay-raise and order is restored in all three establishments. His "let's make up" dinner invitation to Margaret is not all it might be, but his poems are now dedicated to his wife.

AmazonUnbox | June 22, 1998

Tags:. .lost. .bob. .might. .chris. .beating