No.46: Do ‘Optimism Sums’

You never have any money.

Now, ignore this phrase and read on in a state of vehement denial. 

Welcome to the financial existence of the flancer.

If Flancerland existed, it would have no capital. That will be only funny if you have just opened your bank statement and are feeling hysterical.

However, now is the perfect time to do some ‘Optimism Sums’!

These consist of the sort of mathematical spin-doctorings that would  make Le Chiffre from Casino Royale’s eye bleed and which miraculously make cash appear after a series of complex equations written on the back of an old Tesco receipt.

[PC] – IE (fDD) + MNSR/4 =  A (- R)

This, dear work*-free readers is a highly sophisticated algebraic formula that, whomever the flancer might be, will have been applied to their finances at some point. Usually after a big cry.

[Purse contents] MINUS Imagined Expenditure (forgetting all direct debits) PLUS money not spent on a round DIVIDED BY no. of people in the pub = Assets. (Minus Reality.)

Not exactly NASA standard in it’s accuracy but the flancer rejoices that things are not as bad as they seemed and continues to believe in the old Buddhist adage that:

 “If the letters OD appear after your account balance but you never open the statement envelope, does it really make a sound?”

 ‘Right.  I can sell my liver on eBay for…seventy quid…and I didn’t buy that bag I liked from topshop.com. And I bought the Value range raspberry jam this afternoon. So I am actually one hundred pounds in the black and therefore needn’t worry about my financial state for another month. Ah Ha! Take that Natwest**!’

The bank however, has other ideas based on the reality of, well, reality. Which is a bit of a spanner in the works for the flancer who is puzzled as to why, after working out that they have only actually spent twenty pounds this month on their fingers on the bus fifteen minutes ago, the hole in the wall won’t put out.

They go storming into the bank before a navy polyester-wearing individual explains why, using a calculator and some proof. 

But they didn’t incorporate the back of a Tesco receipt.  So it doesn’t count, of course.

TODAY’S FOOTNOTES:

*Substitute any of the following words: money, pride, new-clothing, thrifty.

**or whichever organisation looks after the space where your money should be.

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.21: Take up Jogging

Here’s a flancer-based equation:  

30% of your day sitting down +  30% being paranoid + 15 % innate A.D.D + 15% over-active imagination +10% ability to self-delude  =  take up jogging for one day a month.

On this one, epic day, the flancer will have woken up having decided that their indolent life path can only end in morbid obesity. That they can delude themselves no longer that ‘Five- a -Day’ in fact refers to fruit and vegetables,  not cigarettes, cups of coffee or visits to YouTube.  They will look in the mirror, observe mournfully the toast and cake crumbs and on their (topshop.com)  jumper from the day before, smell the Marlboro aroma of their unwashed hair and an epiphany will occur (after a short breakdown).  Everything that is wrong with their lives can be solved by going out and JOGGING.  A sudden, desperate need descends to join the ranks of happy, healthy humans whose circulation actually works and who move about outdoors (and not just to get to the car).   They want a piece of this happiness! And without further ado they put their trainers on, walk to the  car and drive to the shops to buy something to jog in.

At first glance, a Flancer’s wardrobe could be mistaken for the wardrobe of somebody that keeps fit anyway. Do not be fooled:  countless tracksuit bottoms (you can’t sit and write in a suit, for god sake), heat-packs (sitting = lumbar problems), water bottles (came free with the bulk-buy tracksuit bottoms), maybe a yoga mat (a Christmas present), small dumbbells (a fad) and such like.  Flancers never use any of it for it’s intended purpose because generally flancers are crap at sport. Rather than admit this, they will ardently insist that this slothish lifestyle of drinking and smoking is par for the course of creativity; observe! those Rive Gauche, artsy hipster-types! They spend months indoors eating nothing but Gauloises on toast and they produce masterpieces!  But this is simply obfuscating bullshit and if you point it out to them, they will probably cry, nod regretfully and on their next trip to the supermarket buy loads of bottled water and Ryvita.

Anyway, once they have returned from buying kit, the flancer will often discover that all the energy they had for jogging has been used up by going out and queuing in JD Sports for a whole twenty minutes.  The real fighters, however put on the kit and go for a walk. To the shop.  For fags. But the obsessives will warm up (which will traditionally resemble something that Mad Lizzie off-of Good Morning Britain used to do. Because people who never exercise resort to 80s-style  warm-up techniques* for some reason) and set off, after first taking fifteen minutes deciding whether to take their key, hide it under the door mat, put it in their sock or just leave the front door open so the paramedics can get in when they come back with them on a stretcher.

Then comes the other dilemma:  do you take your mobile in case (a) you get lost or (b) you end up in the local ghetto with no strength left to run from the yoots? Or, the real reason. (c) to call someone to pick you up.  By this time it will be dark. 

The flancer will set off, soon reaching the 200m mark. At this point, initial smugness is replaced by chest pains and the onset of migraine. Anger and hatred arrives at the 400 m mark.   And at half a kilometer the flancer is praying a bus will come along to throw themselves under to make it stop.

At least then they will get a lift back. Who cares if it’s in an ambulance?

TODAY’S FOOTNOTES:

*namely star-jumps, side bends or anything from group-exercise sessions at Butlins holiday camps Circa. 1981. Kinda like this only less choreographed  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeMJOPlK-0E

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.

No. 5: Shop Online

Here’s a scenario to which, perhaps, fellow flancers will relate: Turn on computer. Commence daily, work-based, online browse of newspaper/celebrity/gossip sites. Research for a while. Close down computer. Four working days later, receive package from topshop.com.

There is apparently a global recession in full-swing, butneither topshop.com (nor play.com, amazon.co.uk, stationaryfetishistsonline.co.uk. Not forgetting cleaningproductfrenzy.org) will end up another bankruptcy statistic while there are unemployed, resting flancers within spitting distance of a ‘proceed to checkout’ option. Like hearing Snow Patrol in Grey’s Anatomy or seeing a mandarin collar at a footballer’s wedding,  some things are inevitable, nay unavoidable. And shopping online whilst ‘working’ is one of these things. I’m sure psychologists would be able to charge hundreds of pounds for concluding that this  unconscious purchasing, ‘represents a need to be fulfilled; the flancer filling the yawning chasm of worklessness and endless of days of non-human contact with the short-term gratification of  consumerism and the joy of hearing the postman’s grunt echoing up the stairwell as he labours  under the weight of sixteen DVD boxsets.’ 

But this is purely conjecture, obviously. 

Note: in the space of writing this blog, I have bought some wool and knitting needles, a jewellery making kit and a Teach Yourself Spanish CD.

Tomorrow: No.6: Take up a new hobby for less than 12 hours.