Michael Adams writes advertising jingles and has come up with a way of spending less time with his sensible wife and young children: he secretly keeps a Thames-side flat, shared with three layabout bachelors, where he lives a precarious double life in an attempt to escape the strain of parenthood.
I found it hard working really long hours when I was my own boss. The boss kept giving me the afternoon off. Sometimes he gave me the morning off as well. Sometimes he¹d say, "Look, you¹ve worked pretty hard today, why don¹t you take a well-earned rest tomorrow." If I overslept he never rang me to ask where I was; if I was late to my desk he always happened to turn up at exactly the same time; whatever excuse I came up with, he always believed it. Being my own boss was great. Being my own employee was a disaster, but I never thought about that side of the equation. On this particular day I was woken by the sound of children. I knew from experience that this meant it was either just before nine o¹clock in the morning, when children started arriving at the school over the road, or around quarter past eleven mid-morning playtime. I rolled over to look at the clock and the little numbers on my radio alarm informed me that it was 1:24. Lunchtime. I had slept for fourteen solid hours, an all-time record.
I called it my radio alarm, though in reality it served only as a large and cumbersome clock. I had given up using the radio-alarm function long before, after I¹d kept waking up with early morning erections to the news that famine was spreading in the Sudan or that Princess Anne had just had her wisdom teeth out. It¹s amazing how quickly an erection can disappear. Anyway, alarm clocks are for people who have something more important to do than sleeping, and this was a concept that I struggled to grasp. Some days I would wake up, decide that it wasn¹t worth getting dressed and then just stay in bed until, well, bedtime. But it wasn¹t apathetic, what¹s-the-point-of-getting-up lying in bed, it was positive, quality-of-life lying in bed. I had resolved that leisure time should involve genuine leisure. If it had been up to me there would have been nothing at the Balham Leisure Centre except rows of beds with all the Sunday papers scattered at the bottom of the duvet.
My bedroom had evolved so that the need to get out of bed was kept to an absolute minimum. Instead of a bedside table there was a fridge, inside which milk, bread and butter were kept. On top of the fridge was a kettle, which fought for space with a tray of mugs, a box of tea bags, a selection of breakfast cereals, a toaster and an overloaded plug adapter. I clicked on the kettle and popped some bread in the toaster. I reached across for that day¹s newspaper and was slightly surprised as a set of keys slid off the top and clinked onto the floor. Then I remembered that I hadn¹t slept for fourteen solid hours after all; there had been a vague but annoying conversation very early that morning. As far as I could remember, it had gone something like this:
"Scuse me, mate?"
"Uh?" I replied from under the duvet.
"Excuse me, mate. It's me. Paper boy," said the cracking voice of the nervous-sounding teenager.
"What do you want?"
"My mum says I¹m not allowed to deliver the paper to the end of your bed any more."
"Why not?" I groaned, without emerging.
"She says it's weird. I had to stop her ringing Child Line."
"What time is it?"
"Seven o'clock. I told her you paid me an extra couple of quid a week to bring it up here and everything, but she said it's weird and that I'm only allowed to push it through the letter box, like I do for everyone else. I¹ll leave your front door keys here."
If anything had been said after that I didn¹t remember it. That must have been the moment when I went back to sleep. The clink of the keys brought it back like some half-remembered dream. And as I flicked through the stories of war, violent crime and environmental disaster, I felt a growing sense of depression. Today was the last day I would ever have my newspaper delivered to the end of my bed.
Lightly browned toast popped up and the bubbling kettle clicked itself off. The butter and milk were kept on the top shelf of the fridge so they could be reached without leaving the bed. When I¹d first bought the fridge and placed it in my room I had sunk to my knees in mortified disbelief. The fridge door opened the wrong way I couldn¹t reach the handle from the bed. I tried putting the fridge upside down, but it looked a bit stupid. I tried putting it on the other side of the bed, but then I had to move my keyboard and mixing desk and all the other bits of musical equipment that were packed into my bedroom-cum-recording studio. After several hours spent dragging furniture into different positions around the room, I finally found a location for the bed that would comfortably allow me to take things from the fridge, make breakfast, reach my phone and watch telly without having to do anything as strenuous as standing up. If Boots had marketed a do-it-yourself catheter kit, I would have been the first customer.
The only thing more self-indulgent than breakfast in bed is having breakfast in bed at lunchtime. There¹s a decadence to it that makes lightly buttered toast taste like the food of the gods. I sipped my tea and, with one of several remote controls, switched on the telly just in time to see the beginning of one of my favourite films, Billy Wilder¹s The Apartment. I¹ll just watch the first few minutes, I thought to myself as I fluffed up the pillows. Just the bit where he¹s working in that huge insurance office with hundreds of other people doing exactly the same monotonous job. Forty minutes later my mobile phone jolted me out of my hypnotized trance. I switched the television to mute and removed the mobile from its charger.
"Hello, Michael, it¹s Hugo Harrison here from DD and G. I¹m just ringing in case you¹d forgotten that you said you¹d probably be able to get your piece of music to us by the end of today."
"Forgotten? Are you joking? I¹ve been working on it all week. I¹m in the studio right now."
"Do you think you¹ll be able to deliver it when you said?"
"Hugo, have I ever missed a deadline? I¹m just doing a remix, so you¹ll probably get it around four or five o¹clock."
"Right." Hugo sounded disappointed. "There¹s no chance that we might get it before then, because we¹re sort of hanging around waiting to do the dub."
"Well, I¹ll try. To be honest, I was going to go out and get a bite of lunch, but I¹ll work through if you need it urgently."
"Thanks, Michael. Bloody brilliant. Speak to you later, then."
And I turned off my mobile, lay back in bed and then watched The Apartment all the way through.
What I hadn¹t told Hugo from DD&G was that I had in fact completed my composition four days earlier, but when someone pays you a thousand pounds for a piece of work, you can¹t give it to them two days after they commission it. They have to feel they¹re getting their money¹s worth. They might have imagined that they wanted it as soon as possible, but I knew that they¹d appreciate and enjoy it far more if they thought it had taken me all week.
The slogan the agency were going to put over my composition was "The saloon car that thinks it¹s a sports car." So I did a ploddy easy-listening intro which switched into a screeching electric-guitar sound. Saloon car, sports car. Easy-listening for the humdrum lives of all those thirty-something saloon-car drivers and electric guitar for the racy, exciting lives that they are starting to realize have gone for ever. Hugo had thought this was a great idea when I¹d put it to him, so much so that fairly quickly he was talking about it as if it was his own.
Generally speaking I did every commission straight away, and would then phone the client at regular intervals and say things like, "Look, I¹ve got something I¹m really pleased with, but it¹s only thirteen seconds long. Does it really have to be exactly fifteen seconds?" And they¹d say, "Well, if you¹re really pleased with it, maybe we should have a...
