And this

CHAPTER TWO - Charity Begins At Home


Ah, the freelance life. No 9 to 5 for me. No sitting on the 8.57 with my Puccinos double espresso and Guardian jobs page. No sitting there thinking “Where exactly is Three Bridges?” Has anyone ever been there? Hayward’s Heath, yeah. Burgess Hilll, yes. But Three Bridges? Are there Three Bridges? Did it used to be called Two Bridges? Listen, I’ve done the train bit. I know what you people think about. Train, schmain. Enough

You know that line “Careful what you wish for, it might come true”? Welcome to the freelance life. You know all those romantic notions of the open field, the endless horizon, the big sky… Well here’s another one. The bottomless pit. I don’t want to sound negative, but I’m beginning to empathise with the polar bear in a zoo. Pacing up and down, shaking his head around. “Where’s that snow? I put it down here somewhere…”

Anyway, cut a long story short, I've just taken an office. Had to really. I felt like I was living in an episode of Celebrity Big Brother. Stuck in the house, nothing to do, nowhere to go. (Let’s not even start to make up gags like “And no one’s heard of me either” or “and I’m doing it cos I’ve got no career”. It’s just not funny.) Every so often I get called down to have a chat with Big Brother and she asks me what I’ve been up to today. “Yeah, a bit of work, you know. Getting a few things together, pushing a few ideas around”.

An office. It seemed a proper thing to do. Grown up. “I’m off to work now, darling” will mean a little bit more than “I’m in the attic. Give us a shout of you want something”. To be honest, part of the appeal was that it’s in Jew Street. Where else is a lonely Jew going to go? That’s what I love about Brighton. It’s so accepting, they gave us our own street. OK, so it’s about three yards long. Still. Maybe I’ll find a lost tribe there or something.

Anyway, I've rented this office and I'm going to sit there - no phone lines, no e-mail, no plants that absolutely need watering now or else they’re going to die - and write a book, something that's a not so much a work of fiction as a commentary on the modern world. An allegory. I'm going to look at - and this is inspired - the relationship between magpies and house sparrows. It's going to look at the rise of the magpie set against the decline of the sparrow. You remember the way that magpies were rare and exotic when we were kids and sparrows were everywhere? Well, the roles have reversed now, and - and this is fantastic - we can talk about nostalgia, maybe have a scene where the protagonists talk about how sparrows were better in their day. We could have a TV spin-off: The 100 Best UK Garden Birds – and cut-away to D-list celeb reading out a scripted gag about tits. We can talk about the superficiality of contemporary society and ponder whether sparrows would have been more successful if they'd had that bluey-greeny-purpley bit. We could we have magpies, crows and seagulls cast as a modern Mafia. Can only be minutes before Pixar are on the phone. It's not expensive, this office.

I’ll go and get a coffee, maybe a bagel and I’ll sit down and write, undisturbed. What was the line from that film? I’m gonna play this keyboard like Charlie Parker played the sax. It’s going to fly. But first I’ll get a coffee. And maybe a bagel.

It’s curious how you can get distracted. How a quick trip to the shops becomes, well, a longer trip to the shops. How there are some things you really need. I go and get some money and buy a Roberts radio, a pair of trainers (the others got muddy in the garden) and a new CD player and cassette deck cos they were all dusty and covered in crap because I didn't take them out of the kitchen when all that work started. OK, so a tube or whatever of Mr Sheen would have been cheaper, but really. How much fun? Oh, I know. I'll go into a supermarket and buy some furniture polish. That will make me feel better. That will make me feel powerful again. The other thing with shopping is that it's got to be notes. A credit card just doesn't do it. I've got to do the whole deal - get the wallet out, peel off the notes. Maybe I'll lick a finger as I peel off the notes.

Three hours later… Charlie Parker? A bloody junkie who died when he was 31 or something. And I bet he didn’t have to go and pick the kids up after school.