The Curse Of The Freelancer

The freelancer's curse is sending politely chasing emails. You know - when someone approaches you to do something, and at first it's all "GO! GO! GO!" and then fizzles sadly out. Like an amazing one-night stand. Only, after a one-night stand, we all know the rules - you send a couple of follow up texts, cry and then move on.

With freelance projects, that's not what you do. The correct etiquette is to regularly stand outside your potential employer's window at 4am with a Mariachi band playing Mandy. At least once a week you have to send them the awful "Hey, any news?" email. And they have to send you the "No, sadly. Will keep you posted!" reply. It's sadly pointless on both sides. But them's the rules.

As my mother put it: "I don't understand. They'll get in touch at the last minute if they want it." My mother, please note, has never worked in the media. And Yet She Knows All.

Just for once, it'd be nice to say: "Hello! You know that project you said was definite a month ago, and that I should clear my schedule for? Well, I did. And since then, you know, I've heard nothing much from you. I get it. I know you're busy. I know it's probably not happening after all. But that's okay. I've got other work coming in. I'll be fine.It would have been lovely to do. More than lovely - amazing. But, these things happen. So just fire me and I can stop worrying about letting you down when it's suddenly all back on again."

But no. Instead, here I am about to type: "Hey there... any news?"

There's An App For That

I'm relearning a language before going on holiday. I downloaded an app that promised to help. I spent half an hour on it yesterday while waiting outside a phone shop.

It was bloody depressing. My experience with just like one of the recent Star Wars films.
"Ooh, this is shiny and different."
"Oh, I'm not sure about this."
"I kind of miss the old way."
"Eurgh! Eurgh! Eurgh!"
"Let's pretend this never happened."

There really is no magical secret to language learning. It's just effort and repetition. An app can help. But not when it makes you upload practice examples to a community space, where people can instantly tell you you've got it wrong. Of course I've got it wrong - my iphone doesn't have all the letters in your alphabet. Thanks for sending me lots of imessages saying "Someone has corrected your exercise". Thanks.

Also, thank you for waking me up this morning to ask me if I'd learned any new words today. No, I hadn't. It was 6am. orospu çocuğu.

Credit

I left it too late to get a credit card. I missed out on the golden age of free money. My first memory of a credit card is when one of Paul's wives on Neighbours got into trouble and he cut up her card for her, thereby solving all her money worries. I think they got a puppy the next week.

I spent the first half of my twenties definitely not having a credit card. Then along came Amazon and it seemed vital to have one in order to be able to get Digital Versatile Discs. The problem was that I had left it too late. Everyone else had got a credit card years ago, if not four of them. My lack of existing debt actually made me a problem for a bank - if I hadn't got one by the age of 24 there must be something wrong with me.

Eventually I persuaded a bank and it was joyous (how I remember the X-Files season 1 turning up like an alien artefact, a bargain at only $150). Nervous of my card, I paid off the balance every month in full, until, of course, that skiing holiday which, in many ways, I feel I'm still paying for (you've never lived till you've eaten 20 euros worth of tepid spagbol on top of a mountain).

After that my credit card became a companion. Now, don't worry, this isn't going to be a terrible story of debt and bankruptcy. I'm just saying that it was chic. The early 2000s was the era when people you'd never heard of would send you credit cards through the post. GET SOME MORE DEBT, the post would scream. The sign of a good holiday was telling friends "We spent so much I had to ring up the bank for more!". And we'd laugh. Because there was something fun, absurd about owing a couple of months' salary. Which, of course, you'd pay off. At some point in the never never. A sign of how successful you were was how much thrilling debt you had.

Even credit card fraud was glamorous. I still remember giggling with someone at the bank after my card had had a wild weekend without me in Monaco. Some day, I decided, I too would like to blow two grand on casinos and lingerie. We all laughed at all this money, money owed by someone to someone. But the good news was that it wasn't us. Or at least, not today.

It all seems so long ago. The bank no longer rings you up after your card's been fiddled with. Now they stop the card the moment they detect you trying to do anything unusual. In the last two months I've tried to book a couple of cheap flights and a theatre ticket deal. In 2005, this would have been the credit card equivalent of a tin of value beans and a panda cola. Hardly lingerie and roulette. But in 2013, alarm bells went off both times.

Banks are no longer Bertie Wooster - they're one of his more Presbyterian Aunts. They're more cautious. Or maybe their fraud systems are better. The nice lady at first direct (sometimes I wonder if, when nice people die, they go to work for first direct) did say something curious about it all; "I'm sorry this has happened. But I'm afraid it's not the bank. It's a problem with society."

She said it in the jolly tones of your favourite teacher shortly before a lesson on making shortbread and the deaths of the saints. But the phrase stuck with me. Even first direct has a training manual. A nice one. And I wondered how often over the last few years we've heard a variation on the phrase: "It's not the bank. It's a problem with society."

ur been used

The mysterious local graffiti about the enigmatic Tracy is back and there's no shifting it. It's everywhere like an over-keen viral marketing campaign for a doomed interactive drama. In the latest episode we've learned that the police are just using her, that she shouldn't trust the men she is seeing, that Steven still loves her, and that, if you are planning on going on a date with Tracy you should be careful what you tell her. 

I don't know Tracy, but I'd like to imagine she knows none of this, has moved to Hove, and when told about it, just laughs. But I doubt it.

I did not see Dracula last night

The great thing, we were saying yesterday, is that in London you can do something AMAZING every night of the week. Why would you want to live somewhere else? For instance, last night there was a screening of the 1958 Dracula in a cool bar in Dalston. How great is that?

The problem, as always, is getting to Dalston. I've finally admitted that the London Overground is basically a large model train set, not a serious railway. It's always broken, as if the trains constantly get pushed from the tracks by a giant toddler called Boris.

When I turned up at the Overground station, there was a woman stood doing a SobShout. It's a London thing. When you've taken all you can, and suddenly something just breaks. She was stood outside the ticket office SobShouting: "I have been waiting an hour <sob> An hour <sob> That's not right <sob> It's not right <sob> An hour. <sob>"

In this case all she really needed was for the person in the office to give her a hug and a jaffa cake. Instead he shrugged and shut the window. None of us offered her a hug after that. She may have had knives.

People kept on filing in, staring at the board and groaning "NOT AGAIN." We did not go anywhere, as if by sheer stubborn willpower, we could think up a train.

It was left up to one TFL worker to man the barricades. "It's my first day," he said through his megaphone, "So imagine how I feel." We nodded. We've all been there. "There's just no trains," he continued. "I'm not sure what else I can say." He then gave people who came up to him directions. Through the megaphone.
"Yes, go down past Sainsbury's and try for a bus there..."
"It's a long walk down the hill but take the second left..."

In the end I got on a bus, which slowly circled around the Overground station as though reluctant to let the idea go. The Overground is a brilliant notion. But it's really just a nice bit of graphic design.

Someone has simply played a lovely game of join-the-dots with things that bear little relationship to each other. I could do the same with Sainsburys, Lidl and Tesco on the grounds that they're all shops. According to the map you can even sail from Euston to Stratford. DO NOT TRY THIS.

Apparently people use the Overground to commute everyday. This proves how brave Londoners are, or, like survivors in a zombie film, how numb they become to the agony of daily living.

I sit on my bus, circling around the station in a crafty sidle like a toddler planning a break away in BHS. Eventually, Caledonian Road happens. Then my phone rings.

"Don't bother," says my boyfriend. "They've got the wrong disc. It's not the Hammer Dracula. It's Bram Stoker's Dracula." Understandably, I get off the bus. I go home. We talk about moving to Scotland.

Futureology

Years ago I dated a sort-of call centre worker / ketamin dealer / naked cater waiter. Looking back on it, you'll be surprised to know It Did Not End Well.

Anyway, he's now living in Brighton, and is all grown up and marvellous. For many years he's had a lovely boyfriend who has been A Good Thing. It's actually insane to think we ever made pasta together, let alone went out.

And now the odd thing about modern relationships. Social media means that, even though you don't talk regularly, you can intuit stuff from your Facebook timeline. Is there a card for "Sorry he left you for God"?

On owning an e-reader

Last week I bought an e-reader. I also bought a lot of books. Paperback books. The world didn't end.

Yes, yes, how very 2010, but I've spent the last couple of years thinking my iphone was a good enough e-reader. And it is splendid. But, those Nook things are only £29 – how bad can they be?

Actually amazing. They look so much like paper I made three attempts at peeling off the welcome screen. They make consuming books so wonderfully easy – Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard has sat on my iphone for over a year, but she solved her last crime in a little over an hour.

There is a problem – I have never been a monogamous reader. I always feel guilty when there are more than four books by the bed. But my nook has made cheating sinfully easy. After a day I caught myself actively punishing books. If something happens in them that I don't care for then zip! Off to something else. If those nuns are in trouble, then farewell! Too many pages in Italics? Then I'll call you back, Dan Brown.

I'm sure there's a phrase for this phenomenon, but I can see a time when my e-reader is little more than a collection of banished suitors. Thomas Hardy is going to be a bugger to finish on an e-reader. I wonder if I'm alone in this? I wonder if future editors will tell writers “You're going to lose people here...” as readers become channel surfers, bailing on books when the hero does something annoying, or a beloved character dies?

As well as Dan Brown (yeah, I was back within 5 minutes), I've also been reading Jamaica Inn. In paperback. It's a brilliant example of a book that doesn't stand a chance on my e-reader. It's a skilful exercise of the “Don't go into the spooky house, Doris!” variety. When I'm not cheering on the heroine, I'm yelling at her – don't hide in the parlour! Don't go off with him! Don't sell that pony! I wouldn't have finished this book on an e-reader. I'd also have had to buy a new one. My lovely old Penguin has been thrown angrily into a corner twice.

While they're busy changing the way new books will be written, they're a fantastic way of unlocking old ones. I love my classic crime, and there's a whole host of obscure detectives suddenly within my grasp (seriously, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard). But still... searching Project Gutenberg is never going to replace the joy of nosing around a second hand bookshop. Perhaps we'll just get better at deciding what deserves space on our shelve. The physical books we buy will be the ones that proclaim loudly “This is who I am”.

One thing I would change about e-readers would be an option to change the cover on them so that it tells people exactly what you're reading. Perhaps in the style of an old Penguin. Why yes, I am reading that. No, wait, I've changed my mind, I'm reading this. No, oops, now it's 50 Shades.

But it is not my ideal world. I can tell this because cats do not have the vote, steam trains don't run over the grave of Dr Beeching, and it is not compulsory to watch Daleks 2150 AD once a year. So perhaps that's a good thing. And, at the end of the day, e-readers are about people making their own decisions.

I was doing some research into Penguins recently, and was told that, until Allen Lane invented them, ordinary people by and large didn't bother with books. Bookshops were scary places and books were serious things. Then along comes Penguin and books are suddenly all the rage and tremendous fun. So maybe, e-readers are today's Penguins. Just not orange.

Help for Heros

There was graffiti on the Mosque. You get a lot of graffiti in Somerstown. Recently there's been a lot about a girl called Tracy. Apparently she's a no-good grass who hangs around with quite the wrong sort of gentleman.

I'm sure it's all quite upsetting for Tracy and her various boyfriends, but this weekend the graffiti went up a notch.

Someone had graffiti'd on the mosque: "Fuck Islam. Help for Heros. EDL". It's quite a thing when you can't even spell the cause you're appropriating for your own sick ends. But still, away they'd gone, fucking Islam and helping them heros quite a few times.

We walked past it. We were at a loose end (having just missed a play by Aeschylus because we have no sense of direction. Oh yes, we're that gay). So, we decided to do something about it.

We went home and filled a bucket with soda crystals and hot water and grabbed some brillo pads ("After all," I said, "It's good practice in case the kids on the estate paint 'Paedo' on our door someday") and went to work.

We hadn't got very far before we were surrounded by a gang. A proper, quietly intimidating gang. They stood and watched us. "Fuck' em," one said about us, "They're defacing the mosque. That's wrong."
"Wait," said another, "They are cleaning it."
They stood back and watched us for a bit. Then went away.

It only took five minutes.  Someone came out of their house and watched us quietly. A couple of people walked past us into the mosque. They didn't say anything to us. I'm quite glad about that. I'm not really sure there's appropriate small talk for this situation. Clinton's don't do a card for "Sorry about your hate crime".

Anyway, two gays stood scrubbing a mosque clean and then quietly tiptoed home. And maybe, the next time someone says something about poor Tracy and her men, we'll clean that up too.

Making Somerstown A Better Place

I live in a run-down inner city slum (as Beattie from the BT adverts would say, we're very 071). Somerstown  lurks between Euston and Kings Cross. A few years ago estate agents essayed "South Camden" but have now decided we're "St Pancras".

For an inner-city slum, Somerstown is lovely. But it has its problems. Luckily, the National Lottery has given us a shed-load of cash to Do Lovely Things.

Notices went up inviting us to come along to a meeting with ideas on how to spend it. I trotted along. You know on the news when they say "X became Radicalised After Attending A Training Camp"? I became accidentally radicalised because I sat too far from the crisps.

I sat in the meeting for an hour. There were a bunch of genuine residents. Some had brought along bits of paper, including a child's drawing in felt tip. It appeared to show a lot of green lawn and trees. But there were also a lot of people who were Big In Local Politics. The news would call them "Community Leaders". I'd call them Men Who Loved The Sound Of Their Own Voices.

They started talking with each other. Loudly and longly. Acronyms were exchanged. Grudges about differences between Local Forum and Working Parties. There was a lot of disparaging talk about Edith Neville (she sounded rather grand until I realised she was a school) and Plot 10. There was A LOT of shouting about Plot 10.

I put up my hand. "Er, what's Plot 10?"
Mr Love-Voice sniffed disparagingly.
Madly, I got a round of applause. No-one else seemed to know. Turned out Plot 10 was an outdoor gym.

The shouting carried on. After an hour the cowed-looking chair said "So, shall we move on to start the agenda?"

An hour. No-one had asked for any ideas. Just a lot of fat voices talking shop. I stayed a bit longer. Nothing more happened. Felt tip drawings moved from laps to under chairs. More voices.

Eventually I stood up. I'd left dinner on and had to get back to it. I apologised quietly and left.
I heard voices behind me. "Quite right!" and "Disgusting!".

On my way out of the community centre, I glanced back. I'd accidentally staged a walk out. I wasn't alone. Oh dear.

I'd gone along wanting open spaces and lawns and things for kids to do in the evening. All I'd done was sit too far from the crisps.

As I walked through my courtyard, two boys were destroying one of my rose bushes with a lightsaber.

Liz and her Mum

Last year I got to write for Liz Shaw. It was the last thing that Caroline John recorded before passing away. I got to meet her at the recording. She'd brought in jam.

She was wonderful, and I was so very sad when she died.

There'd been tentative plans for another adventure for Liz and her mother, which sadly didn't get very far. Here's the opening:


LIZ'S CAR. NIGHT.

(SFX: Engine running. It is raining. Car door opens and Liz gets in hurriedly)

LIZ: Drive, mum! Drive!

EMILY: I take it the meeting at UNIT didn't go well?

LIZ: No.

EMILY: And how is the Brigadier?

(FX: Distant thumping noise)

LIZ: He's in the boot...

OPENING TITLES

Anyway. That's as far as it got. No idea if I'd have got away with it. But I'd love to have tried.

Here also is her son's Just Giving page.