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
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.
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