Best Days

The best days in the professional freelancer's life are 1) when you get paid; 2) when you get notice to invoice; 3) when you get more work. So the last couple of days have been pretty good. Notice received yesterday to invoice for a piece I wrote for Lake District Life about sailing on Ullswater (we recently bought a boat built in 1981 and sail it from Glenridding), same day as I had a new commission confirmed for Harpers Wine and Spirit. And today a further list of travel pieces agreed for Information Britain.

That is of course a bit too cynical and materialistic. There are other benefits: last week I had a little epiphany at a breakfast which included eggs from our own chickens, and home-made jam from blackcurrants grown on our allotment. It was sunny, and with no immediate deadline my son and I decided to go to the boat (how grand that sounds for a fibre-glass near antique) for the day. So count future memories for currently teenage son among the advantages of the freelance life.

It proved to be out best trip on Ullswater so far. As ever the wind was changeable and pretty light (there must be blowy days on the water there but so far we have missed them), we were lazy and only put up the mainsail, but still skimmed across the water happily free of gin-palaces. Add to my lengthy list of people who will face immediate execution when eventually I come to absolute power bell ends in £250k powerboats (jealous, me?) who break the water speed limit and create unpleasant wakes.

If anyone wants the full list for publication I can be at your service in moments. Same goes for my thoughtful book of political theory 'Things to Stuff up a Politician's Arse.' A follow-up volume exploring similar themes for celebrities is underway even now. Surely the Christmas hit for 2012. And curmudgeon that I am would suggest something for the Olympics along roughly the same lines. There are several very public figures whose rear ends I would love to fill with cash to the value of what we have spent on the world's biggest sports day. My Winston Smith Room 101 torture would have to be listening to Sebastian Coe's droning voice telling critics of The 2012 Games (never I fear heard on BBC other than by accident) how lucky we are to pay so many billions, about three times the original estimate too, for a few days of circus entertainment.

London is eating us

At the risk of sounding like a loony from a phone in:

Not a lot to do with food, but plenty to do with there being life outside London. I just heard another of those "if we MPs were not serving in Parliament we would all be earning millions and in charge of everything else" idiocies. I have met several MPs, and one stood out as highly capable, though his politics and mine differed. Another was the missing link between homo sapiens and toothbrushes. In twenty years in industry I never saw job descriptions where must-have qualities included the ability to avoid questions, stab colleagues in the back, laugh falsely and provide detailed excuses for almost every project they undertake failing. Ex-MPs are employable because of their contacts far more than what they now seem to perceive as superhuman abilities.

The BBC has been given a kicking today for not featuring life outside England, for which read London. Not the biggest surprise ever reported. I still grind my teeth when thinking of a BBC Radio 5 discussion when an MP went unchallenged when saying that the idea of the National Stadium being built in Birmingham was out "because it is too far away." The rest of the panel was I think composed of London-based figures. I remain convinced that plans to relocate some of BBC Radio to Manchester will be watered down because it is too far away, nay, further still.

London is swallowing the rest of the UK. The Olympics will benefit everyone to a certain extent perhaps, but it is London's infrastructure which will be improved, London which will have the legacy of superb sporting facilities, and for about three years before the games it will be the rest of us who can't get an electrician, plumber or bricklayer. And we have to listen to Sebastian Coe.

The BBC will have a jamboree with the Games, so cutbacks in projects outside London which a little imagination could see as linked to the need for cash for the Games will not feature too prominently.

As a lover of irony I enjoyed various politicians recently explaining that everything was ok with the Olympic budget now, and there had only been one period of error. Admittedly the error was several billion pounds, but what the hell, it's for London. And I also enjoyed the fact that the authorities forgot the VAT. Obviously they were not expecting to pay cash and avoid it, but the thought is still pleasing.