moody blues

There’s no getting around it. I’ve been in a foul mood for two whole weeks. And it's getting tired. I can put it down to a combination of things: work has been up and down all year - mostly down. Is it really a year since I last worked full-time? That’s being freelance for you. It makes me want to take up a brass instrument and play forlornly by a long-forgotten pit. Worse, I will still have to pay a large chunk of money I didn’t earn to the tax-man. Maybe I can offer him a goat? Or a share in my first born, should I ever get around to it? These people are notoriously hard to please. And persistent.

Plus it’s now October and summer has officially bypassed us. To rub it in, there are Christmas decorations winking at me from shop windows and last week, in a fantastically chi-chi Shoreditch hair salon, I heard my first Christmas carol.

I may have to jump off the nearest bridge come January. Which will be about right as that's about the time of year I'm likely to get fined for wrongly filling in my tax return. Again. It's amazing to me that we can live in a society compelled to warn us that a packet of nuts 'MAY CONTAIN NUTS' and yet we're all supposed to raise the intellectual bar and navigate our way through the quagmire of clauses and sub-clauses that constitutes our tax laws at the drop of a P45. Perhaps it's all easier than I imagine. Am I taxslexic?

And I know it’s not just me feeling the seasonal pinch. This time of year, when summer greasily slips into a dank, wet autumn, London becomes a disagreeable place. Tube riding elbows find their way into soft flanks, people push and shove and drip their umbrellas unapologetically into your lap. Everyone wears a face like the proverbial smacked arse and there’s an overwhelming feeling of back-to-school blues. Suddenly, the big kid waiting to take your lunch money and the double-whammy of double-maths before break, are not such distant memories.

Resignation drips from every rotting leaf, late bus and dejected free paper. These short days and dark nights take some getting used to.

Still, this week – and not a moment too soon - I started work again. This is good news as, for six weeks, I will be paid actual folding money.  Now, if only I could find a way to unravel the great mysteries of the Inland Revenue...