Pyjamarama

Today's question: can one call oneself a freelancer if one's not doing any actual, y'know, work? Or should I just be calling myself 'unemployed' - much in the way that when asked once what my natural hair colour was, and I replied 'dark blonde', a friend looked at me witheringly and said, 'Oh, come on, it's mousey, isn't it?'

I may not have any work currently, but I have sorted one of the major requirements of the freelancer: a really excellent pair of pyjamas. Yes, if you're 'working from home', the biggest temptation isn't to raid the biscuit tin on an hourly basis, it's not getting dressed in proper clothes and remaining in your PJs all day. Which leads inevitably to sticking a pair of jeans over the bottoms and a large coat over the top in order to dart out to Tesco Metro for more biscuits.

My PJ 'wardrobe' needed updating - the winter ones I had were bought from Monsoon last year in a mad dash through the sales. I didn't try them on, and assumed I'd need a medium size (having never fitted into anything classed as 'small' in my life), then got them home and they were vast. But I couldn't be arsed to take them back, so have just been rolling them over at the top about four times to stop them sliding off.

My fondness for PJs became legendary at work when a night out ended in an unexpected fashion and proved conclusively that I Have No Clue when it comes to matters of romance and, especially, seduction.

It was a Monday night in Edinburgh. I had gone out to a friend's leaving party (she and her husband were relocating to Harrogate, which was highly annoying, given how few people I knew in Edinburgh). Her husband was a doctor in a local hospital (insert ER, Gray's Anatomy, House or Holby City fantasy here, according to taste), so I was hopeful that he might have some stereotypically heroic doctor friends. Or at least friends who wouldn't balk at a string of dodgy stethoscope entendres from me when I got drunk. I got talking to a non-doctor (damn!), who was perfectly nice, but a bit... meh. My friend was clearly trying to set us up, so I chatted away obligingly at the bar. Then, late on, a man appeared. He was ridiculously handsome. He was a doctor. He was joining me and Mr Meh! Whoop! However, he and Mr Meh were having a lovely chat, whilst I was just kind of sitting there. I went to the loo and came back to what seemed like a full-on Bromance. 'Ah well', I thought, 'I'm quite drunk, this is fine, I'll just sit and stare at Dr Dish over there'.

By this stage it was rather late. The bar chucked us out. Dr Dish was driving. I lived about ten minutes' walk away. He offered me a lift, so who was I to say no? We arrived back at Purple Towers. I asked him if he wanted to come in for a coffee (yes, I really did. And I actually meant a hot beverage. I am a person in Abigail's Party who is not even Alison Steadman). He said yes, at which point I panicked because a/ my flat was in its usual slatternly state with stuff everywhere and b/ I had no milk. I never have milk, unless people are coming round, whom I have invited three weeks beforehand. We get in. I apologise for the mess and confess that I have no milk and offer him A Proper Drink (he is unlikely to accept this, given that he is driving.) He accepts tea, and tells me that the lack of both milk and tidiness are fine. We repair to the sitting room and chat about this and that. For a long time. I am still drunk and he is still sober. There is much confusion on my part as to what he is doing here. I mean, he is an insanely handsome (and sober) doctor, whilst I am a drunk woman who has now started telling him that the tenants in my flat are being bastards because they claim the flat has a flea infestation and are thus not paying any rent.

Once I have said the word 'fleas' for about the fifth time, he suggests that I sound stressed about this situation and that him massaging my shoulders might help. This, whilst nice, is still not helping me to ascertain quite what is going on. There is seemingly no suggestion that he might snog me. By this stage, it's about three in the morning, on a school night. I ask him if he wants to stay and he says yes. (Still no lunging). We get to the bedroom. (I'm assuming the good doctor just can't be bothered to drive home and wants half a bed, given that there has been no discernable flirting for the entire evening - well, I'd probably been trying in my usual ham-fisted way, whilst he'd just seemed to be being polite.) OK, brace yourselves, this is where it gets mortifying. He says, 'Right, I'll go to the bathroom and leave you to get changed'. 'Get changed!' I thought. 'Right, that means "put on different clothes", doesn't it?' So I raced around the room, throwing off my existing clothes, and putting on a vest top. And pyjama bottoms. Because that's the kind of thing I 'get changed into' when going to bed.

Dr Dish strolls back in and merrily reveals that he gets terrifically hot in bed, and it will be 'better for me' if he takes off all his clothes. WHAT? No! You should have said that before you told me to 'get changed'! So he is now sober, off-the-scale-handsome and unexpectedly naked, whilst I am drunk, average looking and wearing what can only be termed SAFETY PYJAMAS. I feel that as he's shown no interest thus far (friends have agreed subsequently that him taking off all his clothes might've given me a clue at this point), I might as well commit to the safety pyjamas and so just climbed into bed, immediately becoming, as he'd so sagely predicted, volcanically hot, but not in an alluring way.

We did eventually have a bit of a snog, but the PJs remained on. He practically ran away in the morning and didn't ask for my number. My work colleagues, after laughing for about an hour and a half at my idiocy, waged a campaign trying to convince me to track him down and bully him convince him into asking me out. 'Turn up at the hospital and be ILL, so he has to see you!' they shrieked. 'He's doing a rotation in obstetrics - it could be tricky', I replied.

One of my leaving gifts from work was a voucher for a company I love, called Hush, to enable me to buy new safety pyjamas to keep me from harm in the Big Smoke. They arrived on Friday and they are awesome - brushed flannel with a cherry blossom pattern on them, they are the freelancer's weapon of choice. And possibly, going on previous form, the spinster's too.

New Year, New You. Again.

January. A month in which a nation binges on self-hatred - 'I ate/drank/spent too much through the whole of December' - and denial. Editorial meetings around October for every newspaper and magazine in the land must be when editrixes put their Louboutined feet up on their designer desks and decide to take the next three months off. 'Find me a new angle on detox!' they bark to their minions, before falling asleep, exhausted by worries as to whether the maxi skirt is over and why no-one took to last year's much vaunted Navajo trend.

So in 2012, we have a diet and fitness plan with an Olympic edge (Sunday Times Style). Fighting the flab with a patriotic spin. Never mind that the reason most of us admire atheletes so much is that they can do it and we can't. I don't want to be able to cycle like Victoria Pendleton. Or tackle seven sports - all of which involve speed, accuracy and strength - at an international level like Jessica Ennis. All I really want is a way of motivating myself to go to the gym and work as hard as I know I should, now I have the distractions of an actual social life and am denied Cheerful James's weekly monitoring and tuition.

The alternative to becoming a budding Olympian is to aim, as one of the papers is offering this weekend via a special supplement, for 'a body like Pippa Middleton's'. Can everyone in media land's New Year's resolution be to stop going on about Pippa Middleton? She has a body that, whilst enviable, is, I suspect, more down to good upper middle class genes than what she eats or how she exercises. It's also ferociously generic - you see hundreds of Sloane girls who look exactly like that (for evidence, watch as much as you can bear of Made in Chelsea). They all look very hearty and as though they were a permanent fixture on the hockey/lacrosse team at school, but they have no distinguishing features. I preferred it when we were fetishising Christina Hendricks from Mad Men's abundant curves. Sadly this happened at exactly the point where I was spending a great deal of time and money getting rid of half of mine, but that's the irony of fashion: if you're a normal person, you're never getting it right at the right time. The latter is probably more crucial than the former.

I'm trying to avoid booze for January, but more, I suspect, for fiscal reasons than for health ones. Lime and soda is appreciably cheaper than Merlot, with the added advantage that it's so dull you can't bear to drink more than three of them. Why has no-one invented anything more exciting for teetotallers to drink? I've never liked Coke and more than one of those horrible synthetic orange juices makes me feel ill; you'd think given the gigantic mark-up on soft drinks in bars and pubs that they'd have given it some thought.

Anyway, New Year's resolutions - according to one of the astrologers, 2012 for me is going to be all about stamping my foot and shouting, 'NO!' a lot, as it seems I've had to be 'understanding just one too many times and have never been thanked for it'. Better yet, I'm going to 'begin asking the question: "What is good for me?" And without guilt.' Wow, I'm going to be fun to be around, aren't I? So, what do I currently think would be good for me this year?

1. Find a job that I like doing, which pays me decent money. Or several of them, if I'm going to do this freelance thing. My 'career' to date seems to have been composed of 5-6 year stints in companies which I liked, having fun for most of it and enjoying what I was doing, alternated with year-18 month interludes in jobs where I was miserable and reduced to crying in the loo most days. The cycle dictates I'm due another of the former, which is positive. I am, however, bored to death of doing the same thing I've been doing for the better part of 2 decades, and am waiting for inspiration as to what job I could possibly apply for, never mind get, in the current climate.
 
2. Stop focusing endlessly on an imaginary life. As I have no job, will this finally be the year when I stop wasting hours of my life looking at flats I'll never own on rightmove.co.uk? Some people are addicted to checking Facebook, or gazing at porn online in a glazed-eyed stupor - for me it's one-bedroomed flats with a small garden, which are theoretically within my budget on rightmove. Offer me a floorplan, a sitting room of about 14 foot and a decent sized kitchen (preferably with nice units that I could live with) and there's my fix. Is owning a flat the be-all and end-all? No, it is not. I've had nothing but bother during the last 6 months from the flat in Streatham that I've been renting out since the Edinburgh move (tenants who haven't paid, with whom I'm still in dispute; endless expenses; the current tenants have bed bugs, which are apparently impossible to shift, and so are only paying 50% of what they should be because of the inconvenience, etc. Every day seems to bring a new problem from the estate agents who are supposed to be managing it). If you're renting, everything from the floorboards up is your landlord's problem. The only disadvantage at the moment is how ridiculously high rents are, especially if you prefer to live on your own. So, if I can sever the ties to the Thatcherite dream of home ownership, I might also be able to stop myself from hoarding pages from interiors magazines of 'looks' that will never come to fruition and endless recipes that I'll never host the necessary dinner parties for, which would be a massive bonus when I have to move again.

3. Keep doing new things. If there's one thing I'm proud of over the last 18 months or so, it's that I did push myself out of various comfort zones. I moved to a city in which I knew literally no-one. I managed to get a bit excited about new technology (ie I'm debating whether to buy an iPad; I'm still having '3G' explained to me, mind). I finally proved I wasn't a total failure at exercise and could actually stick at it. I bought my first ever red lipstick (previously deemed too dauntingly visually shouty and attention-grabbing for my personal tastes.) I joined a book club (bit of a 'coals to Newcastle' manoeuvre given my job, but it was enjoyable). I quit my job and decided to move back to London - not a new thing per se, but brave given I had no job and no flat to go to. I suggested the world's daftest date and it turned out quite well. I don't know what the new things are yet, but I'm ready to say yes to them and give them a go.

4. Throw off my spinster shackles. Related to point 3 above, perhaps one of the 'new things' I should do is 'try to find a boyfriend'. I managed a few dates with Rock Climbing Boy before I left Edinburgh, and he was there when I went up at New Year, so we saw in 2012 together. However, as he hasn't replied to the email I sent him subsequently, and we now reside at opposite ends of the country, I'm assuming that's the end of my Highland Fling. But it's made me think that I should at least entertain the possibilities of a suitable gentleman caller, give that my oxymoronic love life to date has been, to quote the fantastic Lauren Laverne in today's Observer, 'all pumpkin and no prince'. After all, though it didn't exactly pan out well, even Miss Havisham got proposed to.

To this end, I have purchased the ideal 'upmarket date dress'. It is also my first ever designer frock. I know! 'Investment dressing'! I went into Liberty (my new spiritual home: it has replaced Selfridges. Sorry, Selfridges - your lighting's a tad harsh and it's all a bit lacking in personality. And I feel, in a Mary Portas way, that Liberty needs my support more). I thought, 'I'll look at Vivienne Westwood dresses. Just, you know, because they're there'. I have an obsession with Westwood frocks. I love the idea of having most of your assets on display, via the medium of Nell Gwyn-style corsetry. (Posh cleavage!) There's usually some sort of bustle at the back (I'm a fan of looking interesting as you leave a room) and Dame Viv seems one of the few people in fashion who doesn't want women to be akin to overpaid saplings.

I found a black dress. It looked interesting on the hanger. I thought I'd try it on, for a laugh (trying on designer items being nearly as good as buying them, in my book). I put it on. It fitted. It looked interesting. It was a dress that would provoke discussion because of its slightly odd drapery. It had three-quarter length sleeves and a knee length hem (my ideal length - you've no idea how hard that is to find - everyone assumes that all women hate their knees, for some reason) with a split. Ooh, it was good. 'Damn you, frock!' I thought. 'You're half price at £200, but I have no job! To buy you would be a reckless indulgence!' I regretfully put it back on the rail. But I heard its siren call all that night. And then I got invited to a 40th party. I had an excuse! 'I've probably spent £150 on a dress before that wasn't even a Westwood one', I thought. 'This will be a talking point - "Yes", I shall say, when someone compliments me on my frock, as they surely shall, "it's a Vivienne Westwood dress". Screw the lack of job! I can wear it to an interview! Which will definitely get me the job!'. I raced back. It was still there. Reader, it is mine. Now I just need a date to the opening of an exhibition at the Tate Modern or somesuch at which to wear it.

5. Read proper books and have opinions about things. For someone with an English degree and a 2-decade career in publishing, I still don't feel very well read. I am widely read, but I've never read Anna Karenina or War and Peace. I'm pretty sure I've only read Great Expectations, and an abridged version of Oliver Twist at school in terms of Dickens. I carted a copy of Vanity Fair through 4 separate house moves until I decided it could remain unread no more, and took it to the charity shop. The Odyssey? Nope. Dante? Untouched. I haven't even done any of those big American modern classics, like De Lillo or Updike. I think I need to pick one a month, and have my own personal book club.

Perhaps this will go some way towards having opinions about things. I am also wanting on this front. I flick through the paper to get to the bit with the celeb interviews and the reviews (even then, I only read the film reviews, and the theatre ones if it's got someone I've heard of in it - shameful). This must be the year when I endeavour to understand the Eurozone crisis and have an economic opinion that is more well informed than, 'Christine Lagarde is the most stylish brainbox I have ever seen. She's a total fox! She looks like she's always thinking something fascinating, yet slightly naughty, and she claims not to give any thought at all to what she wears! We should be worshipping her.' Is it worth having an opinion on Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband? Probably not, but I should at least be able to hazard a guess at who makes up the Cabinet these days. If only so I can keep up with Have I Got News for You.

I also need to do all the boring things, like save money - a friend and I have decided that for January at least, we should be cultural freegans. So far, I've visited the National Portrait Gallery, and been to see The Ladykillers courtesy of a new chum who is a theatre critic for the Evening Standard. I'm going to beg, borrow or steal books from all my friends instead of buying them (sorry beleagured book trade, needs must) and I think I may enter a barter economy with other mates. I'm thinking of offering free baby sitting services to a couple who are good at craft things like sewing, in exchange for being taught how to wield a sewing machine.

Inthe meantime, there are vast swathes of newsprint to be got through: today I have bought both The Sunday Times and the Observer. I'm going to swot up on Sarkosy, Merkel and Miliband. I'm going to form an opinion on Diane Abbott being racist and whether detoxing is a waste of time and effort (doctors all say it is, largely, I suspect, because it doesn't lead to any lasting changes, you just go back to whatever you were eating/drinking/doing before). But first I need to find out some crucial things about the filming of War Horse and whether or not Benedict Cumberbatch thinks Sherlock Holmes is gay.