Poor me, I've had it too easy

I've been delaying writing this because I felt like there was so much to tell. But then, as always happens, with a bit of objectivity, it becomes clear that none of the stuff I thought was important was actually very interesting at all. Nonetheless, for the sake of completeness, I'll record that, on Thursday I went to see Pixar's Up, in 3-D at the IMAX, and it really was as wonderful as everyone else has said. I have nothing to add to the thousands of other reviews, except that I want a talking dog. I cried within about three minutes of it starting and again at the end, and laughed my highly unflattering glasses off in between. Go. See. It is good. I defy you not to giggle uncontrollably at the Rotweiller.

On Friday I was all nervous because I was filming a thing for a thing. I'd spent a fair bit of time over the past week writing the thing for the thing, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I love writing LLFF, but this was a bit different, there was a strict brief, and it was fun. So I went and read out the thing in front of the camera, standing on a green background, and there was a bit of laughter, which was gratifying. Then Justin and I went to Stephen Fry's book launch, and then on to a party given by the stars of the popular Channel 4 programme, Peep Show. I was so excited about this that I could barely contain myself. And I met the stars and that was fun. But what was awful was that, in addition to my friend Justin being invited to this party (as he knows one of the stars professionally), I also, unexpectedly, bumped into two other people I knew there. This was deeply depressing. It is a cool party. I know I am only one degree of separation away from the party, but that one degree is a gulf three times the size of the known universe. One of the people I knew was a guy from Uni, who now edits the Comment section of The Guardian. And the other was my friend Ben who works with Charlie Brooker. And so Charlie Brooker was there too, and Caitlin Moran, two people whose columns in national newspapers make me laugh with irritating regularity. And there I was. A PA in a bank. I USED to be an entertainment writer. And I'm sure in future I'll be something else. But right now, I'm a PA in a City bank, and when anyone asks me what job I do, I say, "I'm not telling you."

And it's so annoying, because my job has lots of perks. The salary, for one. The fact that, without it, I wouldn't have my flat, the purchase of which is probably the single most life-changing thing I've ever done. The fact that I get to arrive at 9 and leave at 5, on the dot, every single day. The fact that I never, ever think about work after 17:01. The fact that my boss is really very funny and easy to work for. And the fact that I have lots of time to trawl the internet looking for all the fun cultural stuff that I cram into my plentiful time off. Basically, my job rocks.

Except it doesn't, because it's not intellectually challenging and I'm assisting corporate greed, and there are no possibilities for promotion. And I want to be invited to the Peep Show party, not as Justin's plus one, but on my own merits. So I have to do something extraordinary. I can't just write any old book, or any old column. It has to be way more unusual, way more authoritative, way more cutting edge than even this blog. I know. And it pains me to face up to this, but I'm about as cutting edge as a sofa. My life is mainstream. I grew up in the mainstream. I loved chart pop - and still do. I like hanging out in pubs and nice restaurants. I like linen sheets and my iPhone and The X Factor. But, as I've grown older, I've also been aware of the dangers of the mainstream. My MA taught me a lot about consumerism and the way that culture can be co-opted as a means of control. There was never any danger of me turning into a genuine Marxist, but I found it interesting, and I gained an appreciation of the counter-culture. I stopped liking pop music quite so much. I bought more vintage clothing, partly because I really like it, partly because the synthetic fabrics don't require ironing, partly because I wanted to look individual, and partly because it's a way of recycling, cutting out the sweatshops. I moved out of South West London and now I go out in Hoxton with all the other hipsters, to bars that are strip joints Mon-Fri and turn into happening fifties venues at the weekends.

So far, so normal. But my problem is, most people I seem to be dancing with in Hackney are in their early 20s. They rejected the mainstream in their teens. I look at my competition on The Guardian's dating site and there are girls on there aged 23 who have a favourite South Korean film director, and list obscure Serbian photographers as among their most powerful influences. How the hell did they get to be so quirky so young? At their age, I was still going to see Britney Spears at Wembley Arena. OK, the tickets were free, but I can't deny I was excited. Always similarly gobsmacking were the number of people who were really very politically engaged when I was doing my BA. I could barely have explained what government did; they were up in London campaigning against atrocities in the third world while I was getting annoyed not to be invited to Jamie Double-Barrelled's party at Wedgie's. And of course, by the time they're my age, their tastes, their opinions are all so much more established. These are the people who are running the media and the think tanks while I'm write about make-up and boys and wishing I was less vacuous and more worthwhile without actually knowing what I can do about it. I am trying to fly the nest, I feel like I'm just about to burst out, but my little wings just aren't quite strong enough yet. If I'm very lucky, I'll be about 40% as good as Charlie Brooker by the time I die.

So what's left for me in the meantime? My old guilty pleasure: the mainstream. I could write a popular chick lit novel, surely? Or try to get a column in a major women's mag, and write about 69 Sexual Positions You NEED To Try Tonight! I could even attempt to get this blog published. But... whimper... it's not what I want to be known for. I don't WANT to be mainstream. I want to make a DIFFERENCE. Stamps foot. And that kind of middle-of-the-road activity certainly won't get me invited to the Peep Show party. So for now, I'll carry on revising, try to get as clever as possible. Maybe one day I'll have the editorial authority, the time and the talent that means I'm able to write about clever things like the recent super-injunction in a pithy, irreverant fashion. But in the meantime, you'll have to make do with me whining on about my absurdly fortunate life and telling you what films to see. Soz.

Retail Therapy

God I am such a freaking stereotype, which I hate. I would so much rather be cool and different, swim against the tide, run against the tourists, but on this particular issue there's simply no denying it: I'm a fully signed up member of the Female Cliché. Worse still, what I'm about to admit will trample all over my oft-vaunted attempts to be anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist and left-leaning.

Believe me, I know it shouldn't make me so happy, and for the sake of my political conscience and my bank balance, I truly wish it didn't, but the fact remains: I absolutely, 100% unequivocally, shamefully but unerringly adore shopping.

Last night, after a blissful Friday night stay with Tracey at our friend Charlie's showhome in Essex, featuring drunk dancing in the kitchen, faaaar too much Chinese takeaway, even more Pinot Grigio and nostalgia, a brave Saturday morning run, a long walk along the beach in the suddenly blistering heat and a fantastic and pleasantly tipsy lunch at a seafront restaurant where we all felt like we had been teleported to Marbella (in a good way), I went home to my parents' house for a delicious dinner in the beautiful garden, celebrating what may be our last night out there on a balmy summer's eve before they move - and it was all just so perfect. So when I got to bed last night, you might imagine that I would be fairly self-satisfied, content and at peace. Well: I was. But I also had butterflies, because I had earmarked this morning to travel to Hammersmith and visit Primark.

Clearly I wasn't actually as fussed as I'm implying, as I didn't wake up until just short of midday. But the moment I was able to stand, the butterflies redescended and my shopping excursion loomed ahead like a first date at a top restaurant with an attractive man in possession of an above-average vocabulary. What would be there amongst the racks of cheaply designed items? In a moment of delicious serendipity, would I find a fantastic garment lying discarded on the floor of the changing room? I wasn't sure I could cope with the excitement.

Like the seasoned amateur that I am, upon arrival I did two sweeps of the ground floor and one of the first, before trying on my haul, all the while humming 'I love a party with a happy atmosphere,' the classic mid-Eighties 'hit' by Russ Abbott, which I get in my head Every Single Time I see an Atmosphere label ('So let me take you there, and soon, we'll be dancing in the cool, night air...'). I found a fantastic checked shirt for work, two T-shirts (one useful black, one distinctly inessential striped), a starry top, an amazing hat, a great jumper that will bobble after approx. three washes but for now is divine, a fantastic raincoat, a great bag, a thousand pairs of earrings for about 30p, a makeup bag, two hair accessories, a heart-rate-raising brooch, and a delicious pair of orange wristwarmers. I then unexpectedly pounced on a crazy tartan cardigan on my way to the checkout. All that for £66. By the end I was sated, brimming with the combination of joy, heady effervescence, relief and satisfied calm that only purchasing can provide.

My name's Jane, and I'm a shopaholic. It's a weakness, I'll admit it unreservedly - bad for my attempts to climb to the summit of the moral highground, bad for the child labourers in the East, bad for my finances, bad for the planet. But hey, nobody's perfect. My principles are otherwise fairly intact, so for now, keep that wagon away. I'm not quite ready to give up this buzz. Besides, anything that can make me look forward to getting up on Monday morning has got to be good news. Bonne nuit.

But seriously...

Yesterday, after a wonderfully relaxing impromptu day off spent sleeping until 1pm and then attempting to iron a shirt for the first time in my life and completely failing (although I did brilliantly with the napkins and tablecloth - and only adequately with the pillowcases that have double-thickness edges which I couldn't seem to negotiate) in front of the overhyped movie, Once, I then took the tube into Soho and met up with Paul and a friend of his, Laurie, who has just moved to London to start a new life in fashion.

She's spent two days at her job and said that she couldn't wait to get back there in the morning for Day Three. This small, innocuous claim sent me into a frenzy of jealousy. Way back in 1999, I got my first full time job as Staff Writer on a popular pop music mag and skyrocketed into orbit. My start date was meant to be Monday, 1 November but on the Thursday before, my editor phoned me and asked if I'd like to fly to LA the next day and interview S Club 7. You know when Gwyneth Paltrow found out she was first nominated for an Oscar? I was about a billion times more excited than her.

But after a couple of years in swanning around in showbiz circles, going to swanky parties, flying all over the world and chatting to anyone who was anyone in the most superficial, one-sided fashion (in that I would slip into the erroneous belief that we were having fun banter as friends but the moment I made the heinous mistake of talking about anything other than them, their eyes would glaze over with acute teenage cataracts and the conversation would grind to a halt), I had an epiphany. It was when I found out I had to do a phone interview with Britney Spears and the only time she was free to do it was at 1pm and I was really annoyed because it meant missing a fun lunch with my workmates - at that point I knew that the honeymoon was over. In years gone by, I would have eaten a tramp's vomit to have the chance to chat to Britters on the blower, but now I'd rather have a cheap lunch in a bad local eaterie than listen to her wafty pronouncements on nothing. Gradually throughout the next few months, the celeb world became less and less interesting to me and when I went freelance I found myself dreading the work over which I had once salivated.

Fast forward a couple of years and I began my Master's degree in English Literature, something I wanted to do to supplement a newfound desire to teach English full time in secondary schools - but over the course of that year, my eyes were opened in an unexpected way - thankfully nothing like that scene in a Clockwork Orange. But rather than developing a love of life and a hunger for knowledge, my cynicism, previously reserved for vacuous popstars, expanded like the plant in the Little Shop of Horrors, growing new tentacles of disdain overnight and baying for blood with terrifying volume. I learned about different political movements, wrote my dissertation on the way that culture can be (and is) manipulated by the state for its own gain, and suddenly lost faith in the purity or joy of almost everything in the modern world.

After my degree, it was almost impossible to feel optimistic about any area of life: charities were being run like businesses, supporting the evil capitalist superstructure. The national educational syllabus was determined by civil servants and simply reinforced existing stereotypes. Culture was just a tool to manipulate the masses - where government or corporate funding is key in art, how can any off-message works reach the majority? Where sales are all-important, how can subversive literature be published and distributed successfully? In fact - can subversive art that really challenges the status quo actually exist since, by definition, capitalism co-opts everything for its own gain (cf. modern art in the foyers of big banks or the adoption of punk culture by the mainstream)?

Suddenly, throwing myself into anything became an act of naivete, since spending my 9-5 in the pursuit of any one ideal seemed, well, idealistic and thus stupid. Journalism, newspapers, book writing - all lost their appeal since the newspapers, publishers and TV companies all looked like horrible corporate apparatuses full of lemmings that I wanted to avoid at all costs. Charities seemed to be adopting an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude, courting celebrities and wealthy capitalist 'philanthropists' (see this from today's Guardian). Sure, they're doing good - but the world is fundamentally out of kilter, the rich/poor divide is growing apace and the charities aren't able to do much about it. Politics could be the place where huge changes could be made - but it's a two horse race between old nags that should be driven to the knackers' yard, where the finalists haven't been selected democratically and no one cares who wins. So I floundered, unable to find an area about which I'd felt that passion and excitement so many years ago. It's a tragedy that my thrill levels have gone downhill since I met S Club 7.

Now I work in the City, an area with which I feel no connection whatsoever. Being a child of the capitalist situation myself, I took the job to enable myself to buy a flat, and I make no apologies for that although there is a part of me that thinks I should set up a commune. And there's no doubt that if I am still working in finance in a few years, it will make me sad. Naive or not, I just feel like there must be something out there in which I can believe, a cause untainted by modern bullshit - but then, if it exists within the modern world, by definition it must have been sucked into the system itself. Maybe the only option is to operate knowingly and resignedly within the structure, either following Laurie's lead and revelling in an industry, like fashion, that never claims to be anything other than completely vacuous - or doing one's best to change things from the inside. But where? And who can you trust? For fascinating conspiracy theories, you don't have to look far... And I'm still reeling from the Prince Harry media blackout.

Anyway, this is all FAR too stern for my liking. I'm sure we'd all be far more comfortable if I started venting about the fact that I carefully put my theatre tickets for tonight into my book and then sensibly left my book on my bed - so now I must sprint home after work, grab the book (which really is hopefully on my bed but definitely might not be) and then rush to the theatre for the pre-show discussion. It will all be really sweaty and stressful and I'm livid about the whole thing. But what does it matter? It's all capitalist bollocks anyway.