And that was that

This is, as my friend Steve said, Monk Month. I don’t usually take much notice of Steve – he’s a bit of a drama queen, you know, everything is an event – but he’s right. For the past month it’s been excitement all the way, life in the fastest of all lanes, and now? Time to relax. It’s the same for everyone. All those parties, all that drink and excess. Mince pies, eh? “No, no, just the one box of Quality Street!” Christmas, eh? What a laugh!

Actually, Christmas for a freelance is like Valentine’s Day for the single person. You’re on your Jack Jones while everyone else is out getting down and dirty with Dawn from stationary or whatever, hanging out round the photocopier. I remember it well enough from when I used to work for Lord Newspaper back in the old days. Everyone moans about the office party and that, but kinda enjoy it too. No one invites the freeloading freelancers along. Ideally there’d be party for all the freelancers but that could never work. Who’d organise it? More to the point, who’d pay for the drink?

Me, I got invited to one Christmas office party. One. Even then I couldn’t drink cos I was on antibiotics because of that bastard tooth. So I sat there and watched people do the ‘get merry’ thing. And then I went home.
In truth it was just as well I only went to one party, cos it was only when I left that I found out why they’d invited me.
“John, I wanted to have a word. We’re thinking of new directions in the new year…”
Well, merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Still, that was last year and this is a whole new year. A clean slate. A new start. And I’ve got plans. I’m not entirely sure I should be even talking about all this – there’s a Swedish saying that, loosely translated, says: Don’t shout “Hi” till you’re over the bridge.

I was pondering this when I heard Jane’s voice.
“Come on John. Are you ever going to come out of that shower?”
“Yes, what?” I couldn’t really hear her over the sound of the water. I turned it off and suddenly felt very, very cold. “What was that you said?”
“I said ‘Come on’,” said Jane. “You’ll be late for the train if you don’t get a move on. Lord Newspaper will be expecting you.”
I turned round.
“I thought I left the job,” I said to her. “I thought that I was a writer, that I fed baby seagulls, that we had hamsters, that I was… a writer with toothache.”
“I don’t know about any of that John. It must have been a dream. It must have all been a dream”.