[Previous chapter] [The Boutique Agency: November 2007 – October, 2008 (part-time); November, 2008 – July 2010 (full time)]
Portillo got me this Job too. I suppose he’d taken the mantle from my mother, in that respect—although there’s no suggestion they exchanged any formal communication on the matter of my Career. A friend of Portillo’s from university was working for The Boutique Agency, having moved to The Great Wen to become a music journalist. He’d written for The Music Website (before I worked there) and a couple of others; but he’d found there wasn’t enough Work about to make music journalism a Career. The friend, who I’ll call Anders, also played bass in a band that Portillo managed. A band with a singer who was, as far as I could tell, completely unmanageable. But A Good Band nonetheless.
In addition to the above paragraph it only remains to say that I’d have taken more-or-less any other Job I was offered at this point in my Life. And even though I wasn’t really sure what would be required of me, I was certain it couldn’t be worse than Working at The Conference Company.
The role
I often think about what sitcom I might write based on any given Job I’ve got, Prospective Employer. I’ve never written a sitcom, and I never will—because I didn’t do the scriptwriting module on The MA course, so I can’t remember the name of the software programme you need in order to write a script. But during many Jobs I’d daydreamed about a six-episode run, exploring the bizarre Nature of a particular line of Work—and the presence or absence of Solidarity, Dignity and Productivity. “Curing Cancer” was one, based on my brief stint as A Bad PR person in Pennycomequick. “A Foreign Language” was another, based on the TEFL course in The Language School. “Dancing About Architecture” was The Music Website one: a title appropriated from a metaphor for writing about music, made famous by Elvis Costello. The imaginary sitcom for The Boutique Agency Job was called “Target Equals Blank”. It was originally called “Click Here”—after the “call to action” phrase I’d write about a hundred times a day in this new Job. But the former phrase—based on a bit of HTML code—struck me as cleverer. In case you don’t know, Prospective Employer, “target=_"blank"” was the bit of code you used so when a Customer clicked on the bit of text you’d wrapped the code around (usually text that said “click here”) whatever link (or URL) you’d specified would open in a new browser tab instead of replacing the one you were in. But who or what was the “target”? And what did it mean that they were “equal” to “blank”? I think you could have a lot of fun with those questions, Prospective Employer. I know I did.
The Boutique Agency was also a part of the UK music industry. But nothing like The Music Website. Closer to Supply than Demand, which is to say that The Boutique Agency Worked for musicians, via record labels, running websites, forums, electronic mailing lists, and social media sites—back then MySpace, Bebo and, over time, additionally Facebook. Much of the Job involved writing short news articles to post to the websites and social media profiles of the bands—as and when their record labels requested it, or proactively if we happened to spot something that constituted “news”: record releases, tour dates, press coverage; that sort of thing. The Process would begin on Windows Notepad text-editor; an elegantly simple application I’d never noticed on any of my old computers before that Job, even though it’s as old as I am. I’d write the text and any required HTML (usually just “click here” links) in Notepad, along with a suitable title for the post, copy and paste it back and forth into Microsoft Word for a quick spell-check, and save it in a shared-drive folder to be proofread by either Bossman or Anders before it was greenlit for posting to whatever platform it was intended for (usually several). At that point any necessary formatting could be added, and the story could be posted or scheduled to be posted later at a set time.
We’d also write the text for email newsletters, which often went out weekly—and most often on Friday evenings; either because that’s when most Customers were likely to read them (and “click here”) or because the record labels hadn’t got around to the Task earlier in the week. Maybe a bit of both. After I’d been there a while and learnt a few bits of HTML and CSS I was also able to do some relatively basic coding. Any creative Artwork (digital or otherwise) tended to be done by the labels or by design Agencies; but we were provided with colour palettes, logos, and images, etc. (referred to as “assets”) and asked to come up with templates for email newsletters or “skins” (basically decoration) for the bands’ social media (then more commonly called “social networking”) profiles. The newsletters were tricky. You’d built what looked like a perfect template that you could fit a variable load of text and images into; then you’d test it by emailing one out to various dummy email addresses, and invariably find that it worked in one inbox, but not the other. You’d tinker with it so it still looked the same in your mock-up, even though the code was different, and then it’d work in the other email inbox, but not in the ones where it had worked before. We tested in Hotmail, Gmail, and Outlook. Yahoo! was phased out in the first few months—whether because of declining use or because it behaved reliably like one of the others, I can’t recall; but it still has millions of users, so probably the latter.
The social media “skins” could be similarly headache-inducing. Facebook wasn’t on the record companies’ radars when I started the Job. And by the time I finished, it had all but made MySpace obsolete. There was no such thing as a Facebook skin, because everything on Facebook looked like Mark Zuckerberg: Bland, Neutral and misleadingly Unthreatening. All you needed was a logo or profile picture. Bebo was a social networking also-ran. It seemed to be mostly used by kids, but was apparently at one time the Market Leader. By the Time I was doing The Boutique Agency Job, it was a bit of an afterthought. Bebo was also pretty easy to manage; it had fixed templates so you just needed images edited to particular dimensions ready to upload; you could only input your own code within strict parameters; so no outrageous design demands could be made by the record companies. MySpace, if you don’t remember it, Prospective Employer, was a very different kettle of fish—or an unmapped ocean trench harbouring any number of leviathan horrors. I personally have fond memories of MySpace. It was a mess, yes: but, much like The Music Website before The Wrangling, MySpace had its heyday at a Time when the Internet was a mess—when one was encouraged to make it one’s own, in one’s own image; rather than to entirely submit one’s self—and one’s personal data and one’s undivided attention—to It. For the musician or the Customer, MySpace was a wonderfully chaotic place. But for the Worker at The Boutique Agency it was a brain haemorrhage waiting to happen. Going in to the “back end” of a MySpace page and “reskinning” it could take five minutes or five days—depending partly on the scale and scope of the changes; but more so on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, AKA the different web browsers people might use to visit MySpace.
Mozilla Firefox was the browser we used. But plenty of people also “browsed” using Internet Explorer or Safari. (People also used Opera; but evidently not enough of them, because we ignored it.) Safari came with Apple computers; which I disliked, but had to use in The Music Website Job because I didn’t own my own laptop. About a year in to The Boutique Agency Job, Google Chrome was launched, and it would go on to take a large part of the market share of web browsing. We switched to Chrome from Firefox early on, and by the Time I left the Job, Chrome had just managed to take third place in the global share from Safari. This was a period of rapid technological change, Prospective Employer. But for us it wasn’t rapid enough. Internet Explorer remained defiantly popular with Customers over my Time at The Boutique Agency, even though it was a demonstrably inferior Product. So Anders and I spent many hours at that Job swearing at our computers and bashing our heads against our keyboards; because even though you could get a new MySpace skin for a band’s new album campaign to display correctly on three out of four of the most-used web browsers, getting it to work on the one that over half the Customers actually used was incredibly frustrating, and frequently totally impossible. A bit like having a perfectly good front door in your Shop that nobody would use, and everyone trying to come in through the masonry-wasp-infested fire-door. On the rare occasions your code-wrangling rendered the required results in Internet Explorer, it would almost certainly look wrong in every other browser.
The other main aspect of the Job—which gradually became My Thing—was community management. I’m not sure the term existed when I first started doing it; but by the time I left The Boutique Agency, the term was Industry Standard for describing the running of brand (or in our case, band) social media profiles, forums, and website comments sections: accepting friend requests, forwarding questions, and sweeping the numerous profiles several times daily for spam, abuse, or anything else that fell foul of the wholesome impression one might want one’s official web presence to project, and deleting anything untoward. It wasn’t quite what I’d come to The Great Wen to do. It wasn’t writing. It wasn’t even writing code (which also wasn’t writing). But it wasn’t Hard Work.
The combination of these three disciplines—writing for the websites, making the websites look nice, and keeping the online communities neat and tidy—amounted to the role of “web editor”. It was my first such Role, but would not be my last. The Posh School computer could never have told me to pursue “web editor” as a Career, because in 1999—when it told me to become a social worker—the Job of web editor probably didn’t exist. And even if it did, The Posh School computer wouldn’t have known about it.
The three eras
Because I had this Job over three years, Prospective Employer—to date the longest I’ve Worked for any Employer, not including myself—it might help give a fuller impression of my Time at The Boutique Agency if I divide it into the three eras: each delineated by Workplace rather than date. I can’t remember all the dates. (Which might be why I got a C in A-level history.)
The First Era of The Boutique Agency Job began when I left The Conference Company and journeyed via an anticlockwise bus route (with a can of V energy drink and a Boost bar as my breakfast) from The Linear Slum to The Makeshift Office in The Front Room of The Ground Floor Flat in The Converted Terraced House, which my new Bossman was lucky enough—i.e. wealthy enough—to own. There were three desks: one for Bossman, one for Anders and one for me; mine came with a brand new tower PC and a fancy swivelling office chair that would lean back when I did, and forward when I did. There was a lifesize statue of Batman to watch over us while Bossman went out to meet clients, or to the gym or the pub. Sometimes one of Bossman’s friends would Work From Home on the sofa using a laptop, but Clients would never visit The Makeshift Office because Bossman would rather meet them in the pub. And because—I suspected—Bossman was Wary of introducing Proper music-label businesspeople to web editors. I was only working three days a week to begin with, because they didn’t need a whole new Member of Staff yet. But even before I got the supplementary Job at The Music Website, I was already earning more than I’d got at The Conference Company; so I rewarded myself for Going Up in The World by walking into the nearby High Street each lunchtime and purchasing a hummus, avocado and sun-dried tomato sandwich from The Health Food Shop. I also bought second hand poetry books from Oxfam in an attempt to “get in” to contemporary poetry—an attempt that repeatedly failed. Bossman would take me and Anders out to The Gastropub for lunch now and then. I learnt about linguini, and pine-nuts, and artichokes; even at lunch, I was Going Up In The World.
Anders was in a long-term Relationship, but Bossman was Playing The Field; the field in his case being the dating website Guardian Soulmates. He’d regale us with unsolicited tales of his Dates—Good and Bad—and his One Night Stands, fulfilling or otherwise. I spent more Time with him than with any Bossman or -woman before, by necessity of the Business being so Small. So it was fortunate for me that he was mostly A Good Bossman. He was fond of his web editors in the way one might be fond of hamsters one had ordered on the internet one night while drunk and subsequently decided not to return. He was Suspicious when I got the sideline Job at The Music Website, but never Objected as such—just muttered something about “Chinese walls” every now and then. I think he was worried I’d write A Bad Review of musicians whose record label we worked for. I worried about that too, because I didn't like much of the music we were Professionally involved with. But I was careful, Prospective Employer: anything by one of “our” bands that I didn’t like, I’d pass on to someone else for review, or pass on entirely; and anything I did like, I’d get either Emily Dover or Jamie Janakov to review. I explained my Ingenuity to Bossman, but he wasn’t interested. Once he’d been made aware of The Wrangling by Anders—when Anders phoned The Music Website to have the tag or tab “LAIRY NORTHERNER” removed from his personal profile—Bossman no longer felt threatened by the possibility of anyone reading anything I’d written on The Music Website. The Boutique Agency Bossman had a sound Business Head and had managed to Go into Business after spotting A Gap in The Market at the very moment of its opening. But he was also Anxious that The Boutique Agency was Replaceable, as far as record labels were concerned: The Music Industry was a ruthless place at that turbulent time. Which is probably why Bossman spent so much time going to the gym, going to the pub, and indulging in Casual Sex with socially democratic Strangers by way of a Coping Mechanism.
Anders had been planning to move to Another Country with his long-term girlfriend from the first Time I met him, but he proposed to continue working for The Boutique Agency Remotely. After all, why not? All of our Work was already done Remotely, at least from the Customers. The Internet was our Shop; The Makeshift Office was our Workplace; and the musicians were the Products Supplied by our Employers: the record labels. We met some people from the record labels once or twice when Bossman invited them (and us) to the pub. Anders was able to bond with one over a shared love of North American indie music. But I did not make friends among the record label Staff. Bossman was good enough at the people-facing side of The Business to keep us in our Jobs, so with Anders’ impending emigration approaching, The Second Era of The Boutique Agency Job began with us undertak ing an extended trial period of all of us Working From Home.
By the time we began Working From Home, I’d already left The Linear Slum—and my oldest brother and Jory—to move in with Boots and Olaf in The Box Room of The Neglected Flat in the Burgundian Quarter. In late February, 2008, I moved house by public bus with the help of my father and both older brothers: each carrying two or more black bin bags full of my possessions. How did my boxes and my desk get transported? I don’t remember. There must have been at least one car involved at some point. But I remember the bus journey because one of the black binbags—tragically, the one containing most of my favourite clothes—completely disappeared. The Box Room proved an adequate Home Office. I had a desk. My computer was broken, but I could use my Work computer for Professional and Personal purposes. My oldest brother gave me a jade plant to thank me for helping him move house. But Olaf liked that, so we kept it in the kitchen, where he kept watering it even when I told him not too. My room was a mess because of insufficient storage and Existential Dread. But nobody else was likely to see it anyway.
Except that they did! Cosmo came to visit in August from The City of a Hundred Spires and spent the best part of a fortnight sleeping in the barely adequate space on my floor. When I was out—at Work in The Makeshift Office—he’d lounge around the flat in his pants. We had no “lounge” so Cosmo did this in the kitchen; which irritated Olaf, who liked to use the kitchen as his front room on his Wednesday off (even though his bedroom was enormous). Cosmo was long gone by the time I started Working From Home. But Art arrived in The Great Wen that November, on his way back home from Russia. Art’s visit was meant to last a week, but he ended up staying for more than a month. He was trying to track down belongings that had disappeared en route, so decided to use the inconvenience as an excuse to explore The Isles. We went to The Athens of The North and stayed with Indiana, my friend from University. I left Art there with them, which Indiana and his wife were not expecting. But I thought it would be fine because Indiana’s wife was Canadian too. Besides, Art really wanted to go on a tour of The Highlands. (Art was obsessed with “tours”.) We were meant to go to Ireland together when Art got back from Scotland to visit Anya, my coursemate and teacher Colleague from Pennycomequick. But I managed to book the flights 12 hours too early after being fooled by a 12-hour clock on the aeroplane website, and as it transpired Art was late returning from Scotland anyway. Art didn’t care: “Fuck Ireland”. We went to the pub instead.
By this time I’d left The Music Website and was Full Time at The Boutique Agency. Business was good; we were busy. I had a proper Salary. Not quite the “Twenty two grand job” The Rakes had sung about a couple of years before, and mitigated by the couple-of-hundred-quid a month Career Development Loan repayments, but my best Remuneration yet. Having Art on my Home Office floor every morning wouldn’t do, because that was where my chair had to go. With this in mind—and aware of Art’s long-term back problems—I took the floor and put him in the single bed. That way I could wake up, shower, get dressed in the bathroom, come back in, fire up the Work computer and get on with the serious Business of editing webs. Bossman and Anders were on Skype if we needed each other. No Commuting Time. No Commuting Cost. Remote Working looked good to me. And having Art in The Box Room wasn’t too bad at all. I never lived with Art in The City of A Hundred Spires, more's the pity; he was reliable, organized, tidy, and a great cook. He’d get up shortly after I started Work and shower, then get out of my hair for the day—exploring the city or hanging out in the kitchen, Communicating with Russians and trying to locate his lost luggage. He’d cook for Boots and Olaf and me at least a couple of times a week—often more. And in the evenings, we’d pop to the pub or illegally stream episodes of The (American) Office on my Work computer. When Art eventually left, coming up to Christmas, he gave me £200 in notes to share with Boots and Olaf, for our trouble. He’d been no trouble at all; but the Money was much appreciated. The GFC was well underway by the end of 2008, and the grocery prices in the Sainsbury’s had rocketed over the second half of that year. That Christmas, Bossman gave Anders and me a couple of hundred quid by way of Christmas bonuses too. My first (and so-far only ever) Christmas Bonus! I wasn’t exactly rolling in it, Prospective Employer; I was still Paid less, and had more Debt, than most of my Peers. But Rent in The Neglected Flat was not too steep. So for that Christmas, at least, I felt flusher than ever before. We threw a Christmas cheese-and-wine party, and I blew my whole bonus on mid-range wine from Oddbins, which I collected in my suitcase on wheels. Whether or not I looked or sounded like a tramp, wheeling it back up the road, I felt like a king.
The Third Era began in summer 2009 when Bossman tired of Working From Home—saying it was making him drink too much—and the Business was doing well enough for him to hire another web editor. So Bossman rented The Basement Office in The Converted Bus Factory up the road from where he lived, so we could Work from that instead of from our Homes—along with our new Colleague Mike (or whatever), the on-and-off boyfriend of one of Bossman’s friends. He’d worked for a music website (not The Music Website) which was no longer able to keep him in the manner to which he’d become accustomed (i.e. Remunerated.) Anders was still Working From Home in Another Country, but available to us on Skype—and occasionally on the phone to me, complaining that no one told him anything anymore. Mike (or whatever) was fine; we’d go to The Italian Shop down the road for lunch and I’d listen to him complain about how women (specifically Bossman’s friend, his on-and-off girlfriend) were “a different species”. Having recently got together with Girlfriend # 3, I didn’t really agree; but I could at least Pretend to know what he meant.
Bossman bought us all these neat new laptops that plugged into a dock thing and hooked up to a monitor and a keyboard. Just like a Proper computer, but you could take it Home in case you needed to Work while you were there—for example, if a Customer had posted an out-of-hours Obscenity on a musician’s Bebo profile. Bossman even bought us laptop cases, and I chose one from Amazon that was covered in rainbow-coloured skulls and crossbones. Bossman and Mike (or whatever) found this amusing, for some reason.
The Basement Office was fine, but I missed Working From Home. I could understand Bossman’s Qualms about it being A Slippery Slope: I hadn’t got dressed every day, and sometimes it got dark without me having set foot outside The Box Room—except to go to the toilet. But the Converted Bus Factory wasn’t “all that” either. The Basement Office was square and dull and had no view—just a letterbox-shaped bit of natural light coming in at the top of the wall from the pavement outside. (Even my box room had a view of the backs of the other old buildings in The Burgundian Quarter.) The Communal Toilets were my main issue during The Third Era. These were shared by Workers from other ground-floor Converted Bus Factory offices; and by the time I sallied forth for my habitual 11am dump each day, every one of the cubicles was already befouled with visible excrement: on the rims of the seats, around the inside of the bowls, on the walls and doors—even once on the actual ceiling. I confronted my Colleagues about this early on; but they denied involvement. And we never got to know any men from the other offices in the year or so I worked there, so I never found out who was responsible and what their motivations were. The only people we knew on our floor were the Staff of an all-female PR company run by an Australian Bosswoman, with whom we went for afternoon drinks occasionally. They were nice enough, and, being female, couldn’t possibly be responsible for the faecal misdemeanours in The Communal Toilets because the facilities were sex-segregated.
Good Job or Bad Job?
I’ll begin with Solidarity: for me this was The Boutique Agency Job’s great strength. I didn’t necessarily like my Colleagues any more than those in other Jobs I’d had in The Great Wen. But the Business was Small, so we really felt like a Team. Anders and Bossman liked different music from me. Bossman favoured landfill indie and alternative pop provided by XFM and BBC 6Music—but also had a soft spot for ’80s synthpop, new wave and Billy Bragg. Anders liked North American music—not the southern rock or alternative country I liked, but Canadian and “cold state” experimental indie rock. Neither had much Time for the extreme metal or post-industrial folk music I was into then. But there was a pretty democratic approach. Everyone got at least an hour a day, as long as they didn’t take the piss—so, for example, I could play Cadaverous Condition’s “Destroy your life” on Friday afternoon when gearing up for the big mailer rush; but I couldn’t expect to be get away with the whole album “To The Night Sky” on Monday morning when Bossman was hungover.
Bossman characterized my music taste and dress sense as “Weird” but was more amused than concerned by either. He did think the leggings Girlfriend # 3 bought for me were “Disturbing”; but I thought he might benefit from exploring why that was, rather than making me stop wearing them. He wore black jeans and vests, and black leather jackets; which was apparently “normal” attire. I don’t think Bossman was any more normal than Anders or me; but at some point in his Curriculum Vitæ he’d tired of being thought Weird, and consciously reinvented himself as an Alpha Male. Anders couldn’t give a shit what I wore, but referred to my music (usually erroneously) as “goth shit”. We dutifully listened to the musicians who Paid our Wages, and each found something to like now and then; but it was rare that all three of us liked the same thing. Nevertheless, we often found ourselves going to the same gigs. If only because Anders was playing bass, or my oldest brother was rapping. Both Anders and Bossman had met my oldest brother long before they knew I existed; accustomed such as I was to Living in The Shadow of My Brothers, this came as no surprise to me.
I think Anders was having a tough time at Work when I first started the Job. Bossman was out lifting weights and necking pints, safe in the Knowledge there were now two people to pick up the slack, and happy to leave Anders in charge. Anders would lose his temper when record company Staff blamed us for their mistakes—and he’d shout and swear at his screen, and have to pace around The Makeshift Office for a while, beneath the benevolent gaze of Batman, before apologizing. I never took it personally; he always directed his Rage against The Machine. And some of our Clients took the piss. But over Time I saw that this was part of what they paid us for. The Boutique Agency was there to make them (and the musicians) look Good. And if they didn’t, for any reason, it was better for The Industry that it was our fault. If the musicians left the labels or sacked their managers, or whatever, that was no good for Us or Them.
The social aspect of the Job sometimes took its toll on Bossman, and he’d come back after a long lunch and have to sleep it off beneath his desk: an innovative form of Flexible Working, I thought. But our Productivity was in no doubt. Sure, we Produced nothing tangible, because we weren’t Manufacturers. But reskinning MySpace pages, deleting spam, and writing “target=_blank” clothed us and fed us, and helped the record label Staff and musicians keep their Jobs, at least for the duration of three years. A decade since I did that Job, and a lot has changed in The Industry. Do people still get Paid for similar Labour? Probably. But whether Wages have risen in line with Inflation, I couldn’t say.
When I told friends I was now being paid to run MySpace and Facebook pages, and websites, they seemed to think my Job was inherently ridiculous. I’d laugh and agree, out of Politeness. But this made me worry that my Work was lacking in Dignity. The older people were, the less they seemed able even to recognize my Job as Work. I concede it was unlike being a miner, or a docker, or a railwayman—or even a teacher or a social worker. But it was Work, Prospective Employer; and it wasn’t always easy. Not everyone or anyone could have done it, whatever they might have thought; and certainly not as well as I did. So I felt there was Dignity in it, whatever others thought. It wasn’t copywriting, which was the Job I’d wanted to find in The Great Wen. But it did involve copywriting; so I never felt like my talents were being completely wasted. One day in the pub I mentioned my MA Debt in passing, and Bossman looked bemused and said “I didn’t know you had an MA?” That annoyed me, Prospective Employer. But it was hardly his fault my Postgraduate Qualification hadn’t been a factor in his decision to Employ me. Perhaps he never actually read the CV I sent over...
I never once got up to catch the bus in the morning to The Boutique Agency—or rolled out of bed toward my Home Office desk—and felt the pull of the cold old tentacles of Existential Dread. Work was no longer a Curse. I don’t know how long I’d have stayed in the Job, if Fate had not intervened. I missed Anders. Mike (or whatever) was fine. But Bossman was increasingly absent, drumming up new Business and/or going to the pub. And there was a fourth desk in the corner of The Basement Office, which felt like where Anders ought to be. But the call of Another Country had been loud, and Anders never looked back. Bossman got an Intern to sit at The Spare Desk for a while, which bothered me. Firstly because I thought the Arrangement inherently Exploitative, and thus at odds with Bossman’s Socialism—which I thought he’d expressed explicitly, but maybe he just implied by his fondness for Billy Bragg records. When the Intern actually came, he was Weird and Annoying, and seemed not to do any Work at all. I suspected he’d only taken the Internship so he could use our internet for free. One afternoon I put on “Ramar house” by Naevus (from their 2010 EP “Days that go”) and The Intern declared that Lloyd James—who he disrespectfully referred to as “this guy”—“really can’t sing”. So I said to Bossman that The Intern evidently knew nothing at all about music, and was therefore A Bad Fit for the Team. Fortunately, Bossman—and The Intern—had already come to the same conclusion.
By the time Girlfriend # 3 turned up in my Life I was starting to feel I was Stuck in A Rut. I’d always known us web editors earned less than Bossman because Anders saw one of his payslips once and got cross. This was more-or-less confirmed when I told Bossman how much Girlfriend # 3 earnt at her Agency Job, and he said “Blimey, that’s even more than me.” But how could I progress to a more Senior (or Better Paid) position in a Business as Small as The Boutique Agency? Did I have the necessary Skills? And would such an Opportunity ever present itself? Our semi-regular Performance Reviews had become more semi- and less regular over the years. And at these sessions (which took place in a pub) Bossman would say my Performance was “fine” then move the conversation on to his Sex Life, and review that for me instead.
By the Time I might have wanted to talk about how Good or Bad my Job was, no Performance Reviews were forthcoming. And I was making Life decisions that would render such conversations moot. I only met a Client for a Business Meeting once—as Bossman’s Wingman; days after I handed in My Notice. The Meeting went well. And after the Client left, Bossman said “You were actually pretty good at that.” I chose to ignore his Surprise and take the Compliment. Had I made an effort to dress more Professionally, and showed an eagerness for the Business Development side of the Job, I might have been able to cast myself in Another Role at The Boutique Agency. But that was never my Ambition, so I doubt my Heart would’ve been in it. The Boutique Agency Job was A Good Job. But it was coming to A Natural End.
Girlfriend # 3, AKA Wife # 1
As I’ve said before, Prospective Employer, I don’t like to bother Colleagues about my Personal Life. But in fully detailing my Professional Life for you, it’s once again become unavoidable. The successes or failures (more often the latter) of my romantic endeavours over the years have always been inextricably interlinked with the Jobs I’ve done. Had things gone better with Girlfriend # 2, I’d not have fled the country to do The TEFL Course. Had I never lost that fateful erection (sorry to bring that up again—which was not "what she said") perhaps Girlfriend # 1 and I might have remained together, got married and set up a business importing machine parts from Bangladesh. I don't know, Prospective Employer; I can't predict the future—even less so from the perspective of an imagined past.
But Girlfriend # 3 was to unequivocally impact upon my Personal and Professional Trajectory. Had I not met her, I might have stayed at The Boutique Agency Job; I’d almost certainly have remained in The Great Wen for longer than I did—and might have moved on to some Job or another that I’ll never now know of. My chances of falling back into Existential Dread would certainly have been much greater. But historians rightly deride the indulgence in such “counterfactuals”. There are no readily accessible Alternate Realities, and Parallel Universes have no place in a faithfully rendered Curriculum Vitæ. So I trust you’ll be satisfied, Prospective Employer, by the following brief account of my courtship of Girlfriend # 3—which you may read with the full confidence of its pertinence in heralding the end of The Boutique Agency Job, and the onward march of my Career, such as it was.
If only to ensure that the Rest of My Life would be Lived in The Shadow of My Brothers, Girlfriend # 3 was introduced to me indirectly by the oldest one. She already knew him and his music, and had Employed him as a Freelance illustrator for her Agency. We’d also “met” on the Internet—specifically on Twitter, which was then quite A New Thing. I’d joined Twitter in November 2008, while Working From Home, because we all joined all the new social networking sites because such things were of Professional significance to our Jobs at The Boutique Agency, and—at that time—genuinely quite exciting. We needed to be ahead of the curve—and any other given shape that might emerge from the general direction of Silicon Valley. I don’t know when we first “followed” one another; but I do know that she followed me, and I followed her back out of Politeness. Information archaeology pertaining to Twitter accounts whose names have been changed is complicated, because threads don’t display properly. Nevertheless, because this is is Important, Prospective Employer, and because it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow and I haven’t got her a card, I’ve managed to track down my first verbal exchange with my future Wife; which appeared in text form on Twitter on March 3, 2009, and is still online today:
Me: “reviewing books by German sex beasts: [TinyURL link to a review of Charlotte Roche’s debut novel “Wetlands”, posted on one of my long-defunct personal blogs]”
Girlfriend # 3: “[@Me] Hear, hear.. Helen is nothing but a stroppy teen & the sexual references quickly become boring. I was hoping for MRSA.”
Me: “[@Girlfirend #3] or ECT.”
Girlfriend # 3: “[@Me] or both.”
I’ve just tried to print out the above exchange by way of a makeshift Valentine’s card, but the knock-off ink I bought is being rejected by my printer. So I’ll have to copy it out by hand, like a mediæval monk. This is kismetic, or ironic, Prospective Employer; because 13 days after the above exchange, I accidentally bought an incompatible printer cartridge for my Home Office printer and subsequently advertised the cartridge I’d erroneously bought—free of charge, to anyone who might want me to post it to them. Girlfriend # 3 subsequently DM’d me on Twitter saying that she’d take the printer cartridge and send me something in return. I sent her the printer cartridge. But it was a couple of months before she sent me something in return, by which point we’d met In Real Life.
On Friday May 29, 2009, my oldest brother had his first gig for well over a year. It was to take place in the north of the city, and all attendees were invited to dress up as zombies so as to feature as extras in a zombie-themed music video for a song from an EP he was to release in October of that year. I met Girlfriend # 3 at the gig; having worked out who I was by my relationship to my oldest brother, she introduced herself as “someone who follows you on Twitter”. I responded by Rambling and she interrupted to inform me that I had a Speech Impediment, and to ask me whether or not I was aware of that fact. I said that I was aware, and she clarified that I’d sent her a printer cartridge a couple of months ago. Then some rapping happened.
Later on, I’d gone outside for a cigarette, and so had she. She struck up a conversation with me about the gig, and my father—with whom I’d come to the gig, and who was by now drunk—interrupted us to declare that he was going. So I had to break off our conversation in order to address that. Over the next couple of days, she started DMing me on Twitter, saying she was going to finally send me the “swap”. She sent it (it was a copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales with one of her ex-boyfriends’ business cards accidentally left inside, and a packet of newly released sweets from one of the Brands her Agency Worked with). She then kept sending me “accidental” DMs making reference to fancy cocktails and corsets and such other bourgeois comforts, pretending they were meant for a Colleague. I Politely advised her on how to send messages to the correct people (i.e. not me); but she kept messaging me anyway. Eventually I had to consult Boots—who was either Working From Home or ill—because of the mounting Pressure I felt I was under. What could I do to make it go away? None of this made any sense to me, and it was making me Nervous. Boots persuaded me that Social Norms dictated that I was supposed to ask the woman who was messaging me out on a Date.
So on Friday, June 5, 2009, at least 32 people were killed in Peru during clashes between the police and indigenous protesters (according to Google) and—at the grand old age of 25—I asked a woman out on a Date for the first time in my Life. The Date was on Monday. On Tuesday morning at 8:45am I had to text The Boutique Agency Bossman—from the taxi that Girlfriend # 3 had booked to take me back to The Burgundian Quarter—to say that I was stuck in traffic near Marble Arch and was going to be late for Work.
“You work from home?” he replied.
“Had a date last night” I replied. Like it was A Normal Thing I did.
“Dirty bastard…” he replied.
That night Olaf brought home a bottle of champagne. Within a fortnight Girlfriend # 3 and I were exchanging daily messages about baby names, and she’d secured me a lucrative Freelance Job writing an internal newsletter for a telecoms Company so that I could save up enough money to buy her a suitable engagement ring. I was Making Up For Lost by the Time the lease on the flat in The Burgundian Quarter was up in March 2010, one era had evidently ended and a new one was beginning: Boots was moving in with his girlfriend, Olaf was moving in with his boyfriend, and I was moving in to The Victorian Terraced House in The Cosmopolitan East of The Great Wen with Girlfriend # 3, to whom I’d already become engaged that January while on holiday in The City That Trees Built. We’d met each other’s families, we’d shared our first miscarriage, and she’d secured me two more Freelance Jobs with her Agency—producing tone-of-voice documents and social-media roadmaps (no, me neither) for two popular confectionery brands—and we’d got a dog-eared old map of The UK that I found in a charity shop, and we were colour-coding all the bits of it we might like to move to together, with a plan of sorts (agreed in principle on our first Date—before I went Home with her, Prospective Employer) that we’d eventually end up living in Wales.
[Next chapter...]
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