weeks, I realize I have broken the longest-ever-period-in-my-life-away-from-the-office barrier, thus confirming that I am definitely not on holiday. So I felt this would be a good time to give any would-be freelancers the benefits of my experience.
1. Advantages:
a) The main advantage of working at home is that you get to find out what cats really do all day. This means they can never again expect you to fall for their ‘heavens-what-a-hard-day-I’ve-had’ routine.
b) Also important, you rapidly disabuse yourself of the notion that a novel waits to be written about the fascinating diurnal rhythms of a South London postal district.
c) There is a lot of excitement generated by the arrival of the postman, who delivers lots of press releases and books. Sometimes he chooses not to put a package through the specially enlarged letterbox, but thoughtfully leaves a note telling you to trek three miles to the sorting office to pick it up. Glad of the fresh air, you give thanks for the opportunity to spend a whole morning on a fool’s errand. Luckily, the postman never delivers cheques, otherwise you would have to waste a lot of time making boring trips to the bank as well.
d) Where you used to miss good bits on Start the Week because you had crashed the car into a BMW on Hyde Park Corner, now you can listen to the whole programme from underneath the duvet. Then you can hear Money Box, Morning Story and the Daily Service. A good programme to get out of bed to is The World at One. Within a week, the metaphorical lark gives up waiting for you, and rises unaccompanied.
e) Where you used to do the shopping once a month, and buy 10lb bags of frozen rissoles, now you learn that you can visit the same corner-shop five times in a single day before the proprietor gets suspicious and starts following you around.
2. Disadvantages:
a) Cats don’t talk very much, and if you ask one to ‘copy-taste’ a piece you have written, he will probably sit on it with his back to you.
b) Whenever serious work is contemplated, the words ‘Time for a little something’ spring immediately to mind; ditto the words ‘There’s no point carrying on when you’re tired, is there?’, and ‘They can probably wait another day for this, actually.’
c) When you read your pieces in print, the key sentence has always been cut, and the best joke ruined by a misprint. But when you run along to the newsagent’s to amend all remaining copies, the shopkeeper – recognizing you from 1(e) – is unsympathetic. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a proper job?’ he says. ‘The trouble with you is you’ve too much time on your hands.’
An old friend of mine, who five years ago migrated to the country with her husband to propagate children and rear a garden, recently sent me a card which I didn’t know quite how to take. ‘Wishing you all good luck’, she wrote, ‘on your chosen path.’ I sat looking at it with my fingers in my mouth. What did she mean, exactly, by this notion of the ‘chosen path’? I assumed she meant it kindly, but it made me feel suddenly exposed and distant. Hey, where did everybody go? Supposing that she imagined herself on a path radically divergent from mine, I instantly pictured myself labouring alone up a narrow, steep, dusty, brambly trail with a determined look on my face, as though illustrating a modern-day parable about the grim sacrifices of feminism.
So vivid was this picture, in fact, that I could feel the stinging nettles brushing against my legs. It was awful. I felt thirsty; my head swam; the sun scorched my shoulders. Looking down, I observed my friend ambling happily in the sunshine on a broad level path with a pram and husband, while small apple-cheeked children ran off to right and left, frolicking with lambs. I would have watched for longer, but a bloke called Bunyan came along and told me to hop it.
But I was definitely confused by the notion of the chosen path, and dwelt on it for days. Did I choose this, then? And if so, why couldn’t I remember doing it? Hadn’t I always thought, rather naïvely, that there was still time to make these decisions about wife-and-motherhood in the future – that the crossroads were just over the horizon? But it turns out that the last exit was miles back, and I am a person whose chosen path speaks for itself. The hardest part was realizing I can never be a teenage tennis phenomenon. How on earth did I let things drift so badly?
For some reason I thought of the careers mistress at school – perhaps because she represents the single point in my life when I recognized a T-junction and made a definite choice. She wanted us all to be nurses, you see; and I refused. Brainy sixth-formers would queue at the careers office with fancy ideas about Oxford and Cambridge and archaeology, and come out again 15 seconds later, waving nursing application forms and looking baffled. ‘You have to have A-levels to be a nurse now, you know, Miss Hoity-Toity!’ she would bark after them, twitching.
At my age, women are supposed to hear the loud ticking of a biological clock, but I think I must have bought the wrong battery for mine. The only time I experienced the classic symptoms was when I desperately wanted a car. It was weird. If I spotted another woman driving a Peugeot 205, I would burst into tears. In the end, friends tactfully stopped mentioning their cars in my presence (‘My Volvo did such a funny thing the other day – oh Lynne, how awful. I didn’t see you’). And there was that one shameful occasion when I lurked outside a supermarket half-considering snatching a Metro. ‘What a lovely bonnet you’ve got,’ I whispered, fingering it lightly. But then a woman shouted ‘Oi!’, so I picked up my string bag and scarpered.
Now I realize that what I want is a book. So much do I want to give birth to a book that I experience ‘false alarms’ – when I think I am ‘with book’, but am not really. Once a month I phone up my agent and say, ‘It’s happening!’ And she says, ‘How marvellous!’ And then I have to ring again a week later and say, ‘Bad news,’ and she says, ‘Never mind, conception is a mysterious thing.’ I suddenly realize that a book would be a comfort in my old age, and I try to ignore the argument that there are already too many books in the world competing for the available shelf-space. Mine, of course, will be a poor fatherless mite, but I shall love it all the more for that.
Perhaps the image of the paths and crossroads is just the wrong one. Perhaps I did always know where I wanted to go, but just walked backwards with my eyes closed, pretending there was no act of will involved. Because I do recall from early youth that while other children pleaded with their mums for miniature bridal outfits and little dolls that went wee-wees, I was campaigning for a brick-built Wendy House in the garden where I could lock the door and sit at an enormous typewriter. My only imaginary friends were phantom insurance collectors, a person from Porlock and the printer’s boy.
My idea of a Wendy House was a rather grandiose one, I suppose. It involved guttering and utilities and a mantelpiece where I could put the rent money, not to mention trouble with the drains. I remember when a little friend told me she had acquired a Wendy House, and I was wild with envy. But when I went to see it, it was just a canvas job with painted-on windows. Fancy telling a gullible kid that this was a Wendy House. Sometimes I wonder what happened when she eventually uncovered the deception. Probably she married somebody with a big house and had lots of kids in double-quick time, to establish a sense of security. In which case, I wish her all good luck on her chosen path.
The prevailing notion of the lone woman traveller seems to have been fixed about a century ago, and entails such heart-stopping intrepidity and pluck that there is not much in our banal modern lives to touch it. I mean, compared with the achievement of striding across the Andes armed only with a pocket bible and a big stick, the modern-day purchase of an air ticket to Los Angeles is going to look rather paltry, isn’t it? And compared with Amelia Earhart flying solo across the Atlantic in a rattling crate with nothing
