Revelry. Lucy Lord

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      Chapter 4

      I’m standing in the printing room, binding twenty long and extremely tedious presentations. This is the downside of being me. I’ve wanted to be an artist ever since I was tiny, and have sold a fair amount of my work over the years, but not nearly enough to keep me in the manner to which I’d like to become accustomed. My miserable time at art college coincided with the new-found notoriety of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, and a whole host of my contemporaries attempted to emulate their success with substandard parodies, sold to a gullible public as avant-garde brilliance. My less zeitgeisty approach to art (drawing and painting things I find visually appealing) sadly failed to grab the same media attention, as a result of which I am still that oh-so-romantic figure, the struggling artist. That is, skint.

      In order to buy myself time to paint, have fun and pay the mortgage, I take on temping contracts – anything from a few days to a few weeks, depending how desperate I am. I started off temping in media companies, which I thought would be fun. And in the beginning they were: post-production houses in Soho, advertising agencies and PR firms around Charlotte Street, breathtakingly pretentious record labels in Clerkenwell where all the fonts were lower case. I liked going to work in jeans and trainers and hanging out with wisecracking movers and shakers who thought they were cool. Occasionally even the temps were treated to very long lunches that turned into druggy nights. But after a while I noticed everyone was getting younger than me, and there’s something desperately sad about making coffee for twenty-something record execs when you’re pushing thirty.

      So fortuitously I discovered I could do a new type of temping: desk-top publishing. DTP, as it’s known in the trade, involves making presentations look pretty, using computer graphics packages like Photoshop and Quark. It appeals to the artist in me. It certainly beats filing or co-ordinating people’s diaries (one of my pet hates – I mean, how much more servile can you get? Besides, I’m crap at efficiency). And it pays substantially more than bog-standard secretarial temping. But – and it’s a big BUT – most companies that use DTP operators, as we are glamorously called, are financial ones. Yes, even now, as the reviled institutions desperately try to claw back business with hideously written dossiers, brimming with management speak and graphs.

      And, as far as atmosphere goes, financial companies suck. They’ve always been life-sappingly corporate. That’s a given. From the horrible suits everyone wears, to the icy air conditioning that makes you wish you were wearing one, to the macho trading-floor filth that masquerades as witty banter, everything about them has always conspired to destroy the soul. Now, the added frisson of grim fear and shoulder-sagging desolation really make them the last place on earth any sane person would choose to hang out.

      And binding is about as dismal as it gets. At least if you’re hiding behind your computer you can waste half the day pissing about on the internet. As it happens, the binding really ought to have been done by Sebastian, the dim, blond, posh gap-year intern. But he doesn’t get asked when there’s a perfectly good female around to patronize. It’s on days like today that I feel a total loser compared to my friends in their high-flying careers, however tenuous such careers may now seem. The idea of Poppy binding is frankly laughable. But I just cannot contemplate what kind of ‘real’ office-bound career I might have chosen. Or what I could do instead. Become a tree surgeon? No, I decide grimly, if this is the price I must pay for my art, so be it. One day I’ll be able to support myself without stooping to this.

      So I punch another set of holes into another sheaf of paper.

      ‘Bella,’ calls Gina, PA to one of the directors, ‘your phone’s ringing.’

      I make my way back to my hot desk and pick it up.

      ‘Hello, darling. Can you think of anything that rhymes with erection?’

      ‘Hi, Mum. How are you?’ My mother writes erotic poetry and I love her to bits.

      ‘Rough as a badger’s arse, I’m afraid.’

      I laugh. ‘Lovely expression, Mummy.’

      ‘I think it’s rather good – I only learnt it recently. Anyway, it sums up how I feel perfectly, but it’s entirely self-inflicted so I’m trying not to feel too sorry for myself.’

      ‘What have you been up to?’

      ‘Well, Tabitha and Valentine came to stay for a few days, which you know is always lethal. She’s done something quite groovy to her hair. Then yesterday that ghastly little man with the squint – I think he’s the new postmaster or something – wanted me to sign some horrid petition so I fobbed him off with a couple of large whiskies. And then Auntie Charlotte rocked up on her motorbike – and, well, as you can probably imagine, it all went downhill from there. Anyway, what was I ringing for? Yes … erection …’

      ‘Erm … deflection? Reflection? Rejection?’ I proffer.

      ‘Not really the mood I was after …’

      ‘Perfection?’