Friday at last!

I’ve had a productive week so far, and even managed to pop to a running shop for new shoes before I met my friend for dinner last night. I felt slightly giddy when I came home later at having managed to do so much in such a short space of time! What is frightening is that when I put my mind to it and actually get on with stuff I feel deeply unsettled. I have this nagging voice saying ‘this aint you, you’re a wastrel. This sort of stuff is for other, more worthy people’. I catch sight of folk in the street all blackberried up, barking into phones, juggling a coffee with a wad of papers and dressed in full metal jacket style business suit and think – ah, that looks like someone with a proper job, putting in serious hours in an important position. I compare this with myself, strolling along in my fit flops, flouncy skirt and floral top, wondering what to cook for tea tonight and trying to remember if I need anything from Boots.

I can’t help but rank myself in the world as an underdog. Someone whose place is important to a few but irrelevant/disposable to the masses. It hit me hard last night as I walked from Victoria to Waterloo. I’d gone to a running shop at 5.30 as my friend couldn’t meet until 7pm for dinner (being a worthy person she was working until then!) so I needed to pass through what’s called the Westminster Village en route to the restaurant. As I did I had a flashback. When I first came to London in 1997 I went straight to a job as a researcher at Parliament and there I stayed for the next 9 months. I had total access to the Palace of Westminster and wandered in and out like a pro. My hours were slavishly long and I was often on a 6.30am tube from Fulham Broadway where I lived in a student-style hovel as the wages I got then were barely enough to fund a travelcard! I rarely got home before 8 or 9pm and even took things back with me such as envelopes to stuff or reports to read. Sure, I partied hard at the same time and in many ways I had a fantastic lifestyle. I also drank like a fish and spent much of that time recovering from the night before, but I looked the part and worked the hours. I loved waltzing through the corridors to collect the post, drinking in the Lords Bar and accompanying my MP to focus groups and events. Like all those attention-seeking walking talking egos who go into politics, I felt like I mattered, and why? Cos I wore a trouser suit and pontificated over subsidised G&T’s about why I’d rather to be a Tory in another life than a Lib-Dem? I thought I was IT and, looking round me last night, so does the new generation. They have the same hair flicking, ram-rod-straight-backed, stern-faced look that I perfected as I stomped from Millbank to St Stephen’s gate.

But it was all front; all just a carefully constructed façade. I gave off an air of confidence yet underneath I was desperately trying to ‘keep up appearances’. It took so much effort to appear knowledgeable about everything, in control and experienced, and the drink was my way to relax and forget. I took off the image of self-important New Labour apparatchik when I got home and became the giggly, immature twenty-something in search of a boyfriend and a life that I really was.

I am trying to work out if some of us are made for that world whilst some of us maybe aren’t. It reminds me of Brave New World and the idea that people are born with a pre-determined place in life. Whereas in that society they are assigned this role, maybe what we are all doing is trying to slot in to our position. I do know people who are happy in their skin. They know what they like and they like what they know. You could say that they’ve found where they belong and they are happy to be there. Question is, back then was I in the wrong place for me and have I now started to discover where I really should be? Or, controversially, was that where I was meant to be but I was too scared to adopt that role? Did I make my subsequent choices based on fleeing from what challenged me and finding a safe and easy option?