No.65: Visit the Corner Shop

For the flancer, ANY reason to exit the house is a viable reason.  The smoke alarm won’t stop bleeping because the batteries are low. A pigeon spontaneously catching  fire in the garden. An in-progress mugging that demands intervention – anything really that means you’re not sitting in front of that laptop deciding whether tearfully inhaling another crème egg before 8.30am constitutes a borderline emo-psychological eating disorder.

As most people don’t really know what to do with a burning pigeon* (or for that matter, what to do when standing between a youth wielding something they found in a toolbox and an old person who still hasn’t twigged that this isn’t someone trying to help them cross the road) the corner shop constitutes a safer option. A nice, straightforward getting-out-of-the-houseness that doesn’t give rise to third-degree burns or an eyesocket full of Phillips screwdriver.**

The Corner shop is a Godsend. It’s a journey short enough to  make in house slippers. There’s never anyone there you recognise and therefore have to communicate with (despite having lived in this area for ten years) so you needn’t put a bra on.  It also provides a quick fix of what you need so you can get on with your day feeling more alive, without having to get out of your Florence & Fred work wear (ie pyjamas).

There are only a limited range of essentials on offer, so you are also exonerated from the guilt of being a bad person who puts bad things into their ruined body because – hey – is it your fault if all there is here are E-Numbers, high fructose corn syrup, nicotine, aspartame and salt? Would a drowning human turn their nose up at a Tesco Value life buoy?   This is an emergency!

On second-thoughts, the Corner shop’s not really a Godsend is it? It is a Crackhouse.

Feral faced, teenage guttersnipes lounge around outside smoking joints and sitting on stolen bikes. Your paranoia heightens as you pull your outsize belted cardi even further around you and clutch your front door keys to your chest. You suddenly remember that you are braless under that 1996 charity fun run tee-shirt. You feel horribly vulnerable.

Once inside, to blend in, you shuffle over the peeling lino under the flickering strip lights. You feel dirty but excited. After all what choice was there? Tescos is at least a half hours drive away and that would mean getting dressed and removing the scrunchie. You slink past the ancient hair-dye, the long plastic tubes filled with Kiddie-Madness powder, the packets of Skips (only Corner shops still sell these along with Discos and spicy Nik-Naks) and toilet roll with a thick, grey layer of dust on the top.

The chilled counter houses what can only be described as items you might find if you go poking about in the local hospital’s amputee ward wheeliebins.  It is lit like a scene from a David Lynch film in which they hang someone up and do horrible graphic things to them with a Ladyshave and simply being near it is hugely depressing.

Your pupils dilate as they settle on that gigantic bag of orange-coloured cheesy snacks that glow in the dark – which you know are going to be like chewing wool –  and a treacle tart by some baked goods consortium that has Mr. Kipling up at night screaming. No, even a devoted Greggs fan would not touch that de-devilled treacle tart.

You pay, you leave. You hear Genesis playing gently on the corner shop radio.

No.  No-one must know of what happened here.

TODAY’S FOOTNOTES

*Gordon Ramsey might.

**Unless you live in Clapton, E5.

No.47: FACEBOOK

Facebook is a truly terrifying*, time-bending, Faerie land-like phenomenon.

No, it is.

Back in Medieval times if a hapless knight wandered into the realm of Faerie (stick with me, readers) he would have a jolly-old time, surrounded by laughing, smiling faces he vaguely recognised, dancing in a circle to Pentangle, drinking mead from a hollowed out hogshead or similarly Medieval recepticle … and believe that he had only been dallying in this bountiful realm for a day or so.   Then he would find the way out and realise that he had been gone for twenty-five years.

 I think you know where I am going with this analogy.

But it’s ok. FB presents a number of pluses for the meaningless existence of the flancer, benefits quite willingly paid for with foetid breath and chairseat induced arse-canker. And  – oh my! – even appears to make their lot a happier one than that of the working drone.

Let us investigate.

Number 1: Wasting twenty-five years without realising it is excellent progress on the flancer wasting time front.  Leading to a sense of  job satisfaction that presently eludes a massive percentage of the office- residing masses who doubtless regularly wish they were dead. 

Number 2: Taking an age to sum up your current mood in one, hilariously expressed super-sentence (aka: ‘CURRENT STATUS’) is something wordy flancers in particular deeply relish.. And it’s far more likely to establish you as a true skipful of wit when doing it alone with plenty of time and a delete button.  As opposed to being in a real-life office, where it is traditional – when someone enquires as to your well-being –  that you answer as immediately and as blandly as possible.   Making them stand there for forty five minutes whilst you try and construct a devastatingly impressive and mind-blowing comeback can mark you out as marginally eccentric. Even if you provide coffee and biscuits.  People actively avoid people like you, preferring conversations that are over almost instantly, from which they can emerge swiftly and the same age as when they went in.

Number 3: You get to create your own highly-polished, far more attractive version of ‘Who You Are’ on FB**.  And as a flancer, this version is much more easily manipulated and maintained than when you are working with other humans, which is when messy, unpredictable old reality can continually stick it’s bloody oar in.  Thus flancing+FB  renders your carefully constructed super-identity far more immune to discovery.  People in offices can blow their ID construct spectacularly easily at any time – after a bad morning meeting/a tequila riddled work party/ punching their line manager after a photocopying fracas.  FACT: being outside your home with others means you can never pretend you are a stone lighter than that profile photo makes you look.

Number 4: losing track of time at a computer is what people with real jobs in offices do all the time.  So don’t feel bad, flancer comrade – in this you are actually doing exactly the same thing you would be doing if you had a real job anyway… but you get to do it in your softest clothes, eating left over yorkshire pudding with Nutella on it. Ha!

                                                                   Flancers: 4       Working masses: 0

TODAY’S FOOTNOTES

*Hence the title is written in caps. *shudder*

**Which, lets be honest is what it’s really for, right?

No.34: Try and Find A Bank Card That’ll be Accepted at The Supermarket

Flancers have two life dreams: (1) to be published. And (2) that the first card they pull out to pay for anything will actually work. Not especially in that order.

Non-flancer-writey people seem to have this gargantuan misconception that people who freelance make enormous mountains of money.  So mountainous in fact, that they probably also believe that the flancer regularly empties it onto the bed and rolls around in it in a gold bikini drinking Champagne from a unicorn’s hoof.

This may in part be due to Carrie (Bradshaw, the cake-deficient designer-draped mammal. Not the blood-soaked, telekinetic Stephen King one) or any other Hollywood cinematic flancer character  flouncing out of C. Dior with an elbow full of designer truck, jumping in a cab to go home and poke at a brand new ibook for five minutes.

In reality?  Carrie would be a potty-mouthed cynic, sweating out Nescafe, dropping crumbs from a Nutella and bacon sandwich all over a vintage Dell that takes forty-five minutes to fire up (see post.27).   Her biggest daily concern would be whether to bother washing her filthy hair as she’s unlikely to go out for at least another two days.* She would only wear Jimmy Choo footwear if he did slippers.

When I bemoan the echoing chasm of doom that is my monetary fund, my friends make this sort of ‘pffft!’ noise adding, ‘but you’re a writer!  You lot are loaded!’ Granted, most days I resemble the millionaire, Sir B. Geldof.   But I am willing to bet that he doesn’t stand at the cash point on the verge of tears every other day or get that vomity feeling when he hands over his card in Tescos for a shop of tampons and milk  totaling a mere £3.75.

Warning: A distressing reconstruction follows.

If you have never stood behind a flancer in a supermarket who is suffering from a nasty case of skint, here’s what usually happens: the nice till lady will look at the flancer with motherly pity** and convey the news with funeral directorly regret that the card hasn’t been accepted. The flancer will look aghast and, shaking their head, will say something like ‘oh! That’s funny, there’s plenty of money in there.***’ 

(As if the other customers care. They just want the poor person in the pyjama bottoms and Primark Ugg boots to get a frikkin’ move on as they have casseroles to get home and put on.)

There will be lots of sighing and huffing from the flancer, who will pull out another card and hand it over in desperation like an under-qualified magician fluffing valiantly though a failing trick.  To which the nice till lady will shake her head like a surgeon conveying news of a death to a family waiting anxiously in A&E.

Having only a Blockbuster Membership card left (which is only to be handed over in the event of full-mental breakdown) the Emergency Credit Card comes out.  It was signed up  for  in order to deal with serious emergencies – i.e. needing to fly out of Columbia if a war starts or something when you’re travelling.  But it is regularly used for other emergencies like, buying milk or Christmas party shoes.  

The Emergency Credit Card works, their gut relaxes and the flancer slinks away, red-faced clutching their booty of Nutella and smoked back. Which has ironically just cost them £126.78 after bank charges.

In the car park, the flancer resolves to go and give the bank a piece of their mind for this gross mistake and their subsequent embarrassment. They storm to Natwest, print out a mini statement and suddenly  realise that their complaint is as valid as Ratner shares.

They decide to go and buy themselves a coffee with their Blockbuster Membership card as consolation.

 TODAY’S FOOTNOTES:

*This could just be me. Apologies to any hygienic flancers reading.

**regional supermarkets only. If you live in a big city they just look at you with scorn. They may even laugh in your face like a panto baddy.

***IE. twenty pounds left of the overdraft.

No.32: ‘Improvise’ A Cup of Tea

There comes a time in a flancer’s life when they will be called upon to make a cup of tea for someone who has dropped by unexpectedly.

This person will be a telephone technician/plumber/meter reader – i.e. a professional tea drinker.  A person for whom drinking tea is such a massive adjunct to their day job that they sure as shit know a crap cup of tea when it’s served to them by a flancer in sweatpants who looks like they have only just got up. Because they have only just got up.

The flancer – due to sustained lack of company – will lavish disturbing levels of attention on the visitor until they leave the house feeling quite soiled.  As part of this effusive attention, the flancer will eagerly proffer a cup of tea. Before realising with sinking horror en route to the kettle, that they haven’t been to Tesco for nigh-on a fortnight. As the visitor wanders off in search of the internet/plumbing/dry-rot problem in another room, the flancer stands vexed as the kettle boils realising that some serious tea-ingredient improvising is in order.

The hunt begins.

 At the back of the cupboard they unearth a chicken and noodle Cup-a-Soup which will never make a convincing brew – even if  they pick the noodles out. More hunting and a packet of loose-leaf Earl Grey is secured (because everyone has a box of loose-leaf Earl Grey knocking about, because no bugger drinks it.) Unfortunately, they have nothing in which to put the leaves and so they improvise with a coffee filter and paper. The tea duly arrives in the cup thinner than a super model with a wired jaw  so the flancer has to either (a) filter more hot water though another eighteen tablespoons of the stuff. Which will take up to four hours.  Or (b) stir in some Marmite to make the colour look right.

After this fiasco comes the milk episode. Flancers never have milk and if they do, there will only about half a centimetre left in the carton* and if there is more than that, it will be ‘off’. This is Universal Milk Law. The flancer seeks out powdered milk. They have none because no one has bought powdered milk since the war. They have soya milk but daren’t add it because it tastes of filtered laminate flooring.  More scrabbling reveals a can of condensed milk. Saved!

There will be no sugar either (of course) and after a failed attempt to grind up the contents of a jar of silver ball cake decorations in a pestle and mortar, the flancer remembers that there is something far preferable available. In goes  two teaspoons of icing sugar which floats on the top like unattractive pond scum.

The Cocktail of Satan is served. But being a professional tea drinker, the visitor will hand back an empty mug with hearty thanks.

A week  later, your favourite pot plant will die horribly, a strange-looking icing-sugar-esque residue covering its topsoil.

TODAY’S FOOTNOTES: 

*Why anyone ever leaves this ineffectual amount in the carton  is a mystery to even the greatest minds of the Twenty First century.

No. 23: Forget to Get Dressed Properly

Despite previous posts about how much time flancers spend on topshop.com rather than working, barely any of them ever dress themselves properly. Today for example, I am wearing striped pyjama bottoms two-sizes too big, some pink ballet pumps over chunky walking socks, a checked, long-sleeved shirt and a turquoise print scarf (the heating isn’t on yet).  I last washed my hair when we had a Conservative government and if you asked me when I last brushed it, you could go and make yourself a souffle whilst I try to remember.

For most flancers, their daily ‘commute’ consists of: bed to coffee machine to desk.  Therefore, dressing like you’ve covered yourself in glue and sprinted though a charity shop’s ‘To Be Sorted’ pile is commonplace.  I regularly scare postmen requiring a signature, unexpected visitors and myself – if I happen to stumble near a mirror.  In short – the flancer’s work wardrobe is the sort of thing that would have Jeff Banks waking in the night screaming and gnashing his teeth.

The other day, a friend called me up for coffee. So desperate was I to go outside where other human beings are,  I turned off my laptop, put on a coat and unthinkingly left the house. Halfway through coffee I looked down at myself. I realised I had simply gone through the morning’s non-dressing ritual as per, which is fine for my living room/work space but very not-fine for a vaguely respectable – and more importantly, public – area. 

As it happened,  I was wearing (a) no bra, (b) my pyjama top and a cardi which I had slept in (c) no socks and (d) jeans that had been on the floor of my room longer than the rug.  I could also smell something wierd, which in retrospect was probably my hair.  On the plus side, looking this bad means people regularly offer to pay for your coffee. On the minus side, people pull their children away in horror and intimate relationships rapidly degenerate when for the third time that month your partner sees you in your ‘work clothes’ and assume you have a drink problem.

One final note: I watched The September Issue the other night which is about U.S. Vogue Dragon Queen, Anna Wintour.  I imagined her working from home in thermals, flip flops and a Hello Kitty nightie with soup stains on it and it made me like her so much more.

No.9: Decide to do something else

There will be a day (usually around the three-week mark. Every month.)  That the flancer wakes up in a cold sweat. And not because they realise they drank a whole bottle of wine to themselves again yesterday.  They will sit up in their tousled sheets and realise, with a wave of nausea (not wine-related) that they MIGHT HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH THEIR LIVES. This is considered hitting rock bottom, as joining the Workforce Proper means full, Workforce Proper hours. Without deadline anxiety toast-scoffing.* Without unfettered social networking and television access.  Without smoking every half hour.  With other people they might hate!

However, on the plus side sits: not becoming borderline agoraphobic, getting dressed before 1.30 in the afternoon, actually having money in the bank without the letters ‘OD’ after them** and finally being able to repay their parents the loan they borrowed in 1995.

Flancers are often accused of being job-shy. This monika often falls from the disapproving lips of a successful, aggressively encouraging parent or live-in partner who does something hideously unnatural, like wear a uniform.   But it’s hard for someone who gets to ‘clock off at the same time every day’ to ‘understand how those seemingly less numerous working hours are more than repaid in stress,’ and that‘ you can’t force the creative process you know. I have actually been <thinking> for the last two days about this piece.’ And that it may ‘appear I sleep in ’til eleven but more than likely I was  up working till 1 am on a deadline the night before.’ Or ‘Ok, I may be on topshop.com <now>, but I’ll be working 17 hours a day when it all floods in next week’.

It’s all relative. Proper-jobbers may protest to never having actually seen this speculative series of events manifest in reality.  But they very easily could.  There is always that risk and if those Doubting Thomases didn’t bugger off at the first sign that they’d be covering both halves of the rent again, they would see it.  Of course, there are flancers who do shift work and any fellow, self-employed creatives admire this sort of ‘coal-face-esque’ grafting. But as a shifting flancer (or ‘freelance scum’ as staffers call them.  To their face of course, as they’d be at home with their feet up watching Trisha in a matter of weeks anyway so why pretend?) the home-shaped light at the end of the office shaped tunnel is always in sight. And you always get paid more than everyone else anyway.

The prospect of giving up working amongst your own personal filth is great wrench for flancers*** , despite the silver lining that brainstorming job alternatives is another excuse to go out and buy stationary and write in it over a cappuccino. And hopefully someone will see you furiously scribbling notes and assume you are a very, high-pressured journalist, as  opposed to the reality which is that you are writing out the pros and cons of becoming a vet.  The biggest obstacle here is that despite a large chunk of flancers being incredibly talented  they can rarely do anything else.  Except perhaps become a GP **** given the hours spent Googling their own ailments.   

Then comes the epiphany that, even in attempting to flee the money-less, misery-fest of journalism, here they are drinking coffee and writing again! Perhaps this is a sign! They cannot escape what they were born to do!  Fighting nature is wrong! And decide to keep on with the glorious struggle, before heading off to the bank to ask for another extension on the overdraft.

 

*because you are not allowed to be seen eating in media offices. This is law.

** Putting through £350 pounds of coffee and sandwiches as ‘entertaining’ can make accountants suspicious. Believe me.

***just look at any staff journalist’s desk and you will see how much they miss it.

 ****Which actually worked for Emma Deeks.