But sadly this just isn’t a good economic climate to be a freelance researcher in.
I didn’t mention this bit to Joy, though, but being online most of the day at least gave me a great opportunity to catch up on all my dating websites. Every cloud, and all that.
‘Just listen to me for a minute, love,’ said Joy, shoving her plate away, leaning back on the kitchen chair and rubbing her tummy like she’d just ate two Christmas dinners back to back. ‘Because I seriously think you need to wise up a bit. Stop jumping in feet first with guys you meet online and who you know absolutely nothing about.’
‘Ah come on, Joy, you have to understand I’m just enjoying all the messaging and flirting with Andy so much! I think I really like him and come on, when is the last time you heard me say that about any guy? And December is around the corner. You of all people know just how tough that month always is for me, even though it’s been all of two years now. Is it so wrong that I don’t exactly relish the thoughts of facing it all alone, same as I seem to do every other year?’
And for the first time all evening there’s silence.
But then I’d just played my trump card. The Christmas card. I know it and so does Joy. Long story and trust me, you don’t really want to know.
‘Oh hon, you’re not alone and you never will be,’ she eventually says, softening now. ‘Of course I know how rough December is for you. All I’m saying is … well, just look at you. You’re a gorgeous girl and a wonderful person and a fabulous friend. So why do you feel the need to embellish that and tell all these out and out lies about yourself? And all for what, to impress some stranger? Why can’t you just be yourself online? Trust me, any fella would be delighted to be with the real you, not this online façade called Holly Johnson.’
Anxious for a subject change, I leaned back against my chair, then segued off into an only-slightly-too-exaggerated yawn.
‘You know what, hon?’ I told her, sounding just a tad too high-pitched. ‘It’s been a long day at the end of a very long week. OK if we leave the washing up till tomorrow? I think I fancy an early night.’
‘You’re going to bed?’
‘Ermm … yeah.’
‘What? Now? Before Graham Norton? You never miss Graham Norton on a Friday night.’
‘Ermm, well … is that a problem?’
‘Not if you’re telling me the truth, it’s not,’ she said, black kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed down to two suspicious slits.
‘Course I am!’ I insisted, hopping to my feet and even throwing in a few eye rubs for good measure.
‘And you’re categorically not going into your room to log on to your iPad right now? So you can check whether or not Captain Fantastic has got back to you?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
Ahem. But approximately two minutes later, I was back online. And checking. And boy was it worth the wait.
Dear God, I distinctly remember thinking. Was it actually possible to feel like you’d finally met someone with serious potential after such a relatively short space of time? For all of half a second, I debated rushing back out to our living room to waft his latest emails right under Joy’s cynical nose, then realized it mightn’t go down particularly well. And instead, I got straight back to messaging Andy McCoy (Captain).
Just a few days after that, I was back in work at the first 8 a.m. pitching session of the week; a fun, intense two hours which basically involves the entire Afternoon Delight team sitting around News FM’s bright, airy boardroom, lobbing ideas back and forth at each other and hoping against hope that your story would somehow be the one that would turn into a grenade and catch fire.
It’s always one giant buzzing adrenaline rush and is by far my favourite part of the whole week. But then, as I’d learned from all my long years working there, there’s a sort of alchemy to a daytime phone-in show like ours. Often we’ll brainstorm an idea to death and leave the meeting convinced this would be a major talking point for the show, something that would really get the whole nation fired up, only for it to flop right on its ear and just fizzle away to nothing. Generally any topic that came under the banner headlines Anglo-Irish shares, bank CEOs’ inflated pensions, the Tea Party, or absolutely anything involving Angela Merkel.
And yet other times, one of us will chance on an improbably daft story buried deep in a tiny corner of page seventeen in the Chronicle; usually something gross, like how drinking your own wee can add on years to your life. So we often toss it into the show, more as a gag item than anything else, and you can be bloody sure that’s the story that would have the phone lines hopping for the afternoon and eventually end up trending on Twitter. And if you ever manage to score a Twitter trend, it’s considered major brownie points for you round here, where your impact level on social media is seen as something of a barometer of success.
Anyway, that particular morning, there were seven of us all sitting round the giant oval table of News FM’s boardroom, surrounded by a picnic of Starbucks cups, muffins and half-eaten cheese bagels. A stunningly impressive boardroom by the way, with a panoramic view right over Grand Canal Quay, where a weak, wintry sun was making the water sparkle and dance in the early morning light.
‘So, anyone want to start the ball rolling?’ said Aggie, executive producer of the show and my direct boss, kicking off her high heels like she always does before settling down to business. She’s fabulous, Aggie; takes no nonsense and doesn’t sugar-coat things. One of those straight-talking, ‘lean in’ women of the Sheryl Sandberg school, utterly unafraid to make tough calls and not in the least bothered about what other people think of her. For God’s sake, this is a woman who’s let her hair go completely white/grey. Voluntarily. Yet every one of us sitting round that table would think of her less as a boss and more of a friend, if that makes any sense. A boss-friend, if you will.
‘Oh you know what? I read a really juicy one over the weekend,’ Dermot piped up from right beside me. Dermot’s my best buddy round here; he’s about my own age, and like me was recently cut back from being a full-time researcher to just part-time. So he and I are in exactly the same boat and both of us continue to gamely pitch up to work on days we’re effectively not getting paid for. Except in Dermot’s case he really drives the point home by turning up on his freebie days in arse-clinging Lycra and tight spandex gym tops. Subliminal message: ‘Just so you all know, I had to drag myself away from a treadmill for this.’
‘Go on,’ said Aggie, tapping a biro on the notepad in front of her.
‘OK, so it’s about a new epidemic of false widow spiders that’s sweeping parts of the country,’ said Dermot, swinging back in his chair, arms folded, almost with a thought balloon coming out of his head saying, ‘Bloody well pay me for being here and I’ll fill you in some more.’
‘False widow spiders?’ said Aggie, to a few disgusted ‘eughhhs!’ from around the table.
‘Yeah, well apparently there was a women in Cork who had to be hospitalized because she was bitten by one,’ Dermot went on, undeterred. ‘So her doctors told her this was one of several cases that had presented over the last few days … and you know, the false
