2 April 2025

A little outsourced admin later and I am slightly less poor

After 35 years, it turns out freelancing can pay off.

As we stagger into the cruellest month and the days start getting longer than the nights, Brighton begins to stir again. Not that it had ever really stopped. But the seagulls begin to sound less mocking in spring weather than they do in the dark; the dossers are a little less woebegone; and I can open the windows at the back and front ends of the Hove-l so a draught can blow away the fusty air. This is particularly welcome. The bedroom in doesn’t exactly smell like someone has died in it, but it does smell like someone without hope has been lying in bed there since the clocks went back in October.

There is another reason the gloom has lifted. You might have remembered that at the beginning of the year I had some good financial news that was going to make the first quarter of 2025 considerably less anxious-making than… well, the previous 17 years. I timed it right, almost down the day, and the last week of March was spent hoarding the pennies and watching the available funds in the bank account dwindle, like the counter on a bomb in a Bond film, to zero. Things were getting a bit scary but in the end ALCS, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, has come through with the goods on three years’ worth of freelance articles.

Getting this money was something of a saga in itself. To claim it, you have to give the headline, wordcount and place of publication of every article you have written in up to a three-year period. I tried doing this last year but didn’t do it right and received bupkis despite staying up all night before the deadline typing up the details.

This time round I got the daughter of the friend who’d told me about ALCS in the first place – imagine, I’d been a freelance writer for 35 years and had never heard of them – to do my admin for me, because a) she offered and b) she has the kind of brain that can do this kind of thing. Also c) she seems to like me, and if there’s one thing I am proud of – if I were immature, which I am, of course, I would call it my superpower – it is my ability to get young people to approve of me, and enjoy my company.

This young woman, whom I shall call L—, has in the past proved herself to be competent in many areas, and only the other day we agreed that Haribo Twin Snakes (see last week but one’s column) are the finest sweets in the land. (She also applied to be a detective in a certain UK police administration, and all was going well until I supplied a reference which commended her honesty and integrity. That was the end of that, and you don’t have to be a genius to work out where this particular police department is based.) So I sat back and did nothing while she filled in the forms, dealt with the right people, and, hey presto, this morning a nice sum of money was placed in my bank account. I agreed to pay L— 10 per cent of whatever she managed to get for me; then thought better of it, and offered her 15 per cent, the standard agents’ fee. She protested vigorously against this but I held firm, and I have also offered to buy her and her mother a nice meal at a restaurant of their choice (within reason). After a prolonged struggle, she relented.

So now I am in the happy position of being not one pay cheque away from ruin, but two pay cheques away. Well, theoretically. I am, it might not surprise my regular readers to know, not the most responsible of people when it comes to money – but what is the point of denying yourself when one has so little time on this Earth? Ant or grasshopper, as the fable has it? Grasshopper every time for me. It can lead to some fraught times, but at least one has lived.

I know how it will all go: the same way the last lot did. On licentious living, on paying another instalment of a loan from a friend that dates back to the second Blair administration, and on deliveries from the Magic Wok on Preston Street, whose Singapore-fried noodles I warmly recommend. Oh, and council tax. Their latest letter has been sitting in a prominent position on a kitchen surface, and when I have finished writing this and poured myself a drink I should be brave enough to open it.

It has also not escaped my notice that Johnnie Walker Black Label – their excellent 12-year-old, not to be confused with their Red Label, which is a bit meh – is back on offer at £24.50 a bottle in Sainsbury’s, which is pretty much half price. I remember goggling in wonder when I first saw the red price tag on the screened-off shelf in the Sainsbury’s Local. The thing about Scotch one must remember is that it is not, in fact, the distillery it comes from that is important – it is how old it is. The ideal would be a 16-year-old Lagavulin but I’m not that rich. It is the Scotch that was favoured by the late Christopher Hitchens; so when I pour myself a glass I shall raise it to him before sipping. He will not be beaming down at me from heaven because he didn’t believe in such nonsense, but you know, just in case.

[See also: Listening through my father’s ears]