He's Fired....

Sitting in the departure 'lounge' of an airport surrounded by itchy fellow travellers. We're ringed with shops, like a pioneer family circled by wagons, all trying to entice us into parting with our credit-crunched dosh. Lots of us do. Anything to lift the boredom of the wait for the gate.

In order to be able to sit down at a table and use my laptop properly, I have had to buy a skinny latte from Starbucks. The alternative is to slump in one of those rows of sling seats, fine if you want to practise contortionist typing, but not if you want to work. Behind me, tinkling faintly, is the sound of truly execrable covers of 'Christmas Classics'. Sung by what appear to be Pinky and Perky's tenor nephews. On crack.

I'm on my way home from a weekend tryst with the Part-Time Boyfriend. Great weekend, usual parting. He's been separated for a year-and-a-half and is wary of saying anything other than "be great to do this again, sometime." By the time I get to the airport I have decided that it wouldn't be so great, really.

Can you do P45s by email?

Free at last...

After much manoeuvring I am no longer a wage slave. I have officially given up my nice salaried prison of a job.

In the middle of the the biggest economic crisis since Jesus cleared the temple. Yes, I know. My timing has always been fab, I feel.

I aim to keep body and soul together by freelancing a bit, by consulting, in the things I used to get paid a salary to do and by not listening to Robert Peston anymore.

I have not done this, I hasten to add, because I have delusions of grandeur about my capacity to earn a crust as a writer. Perish the thought. (Although living in hope has always been one of the things I was best at. Or should that be "at which I was best"? Anyway.) It has been with a view to escaping the rat race. Downshifting. Living simply. That sort of thing.

I have been practising this downshifting thing for the last two years, saving as much as I could for the glorious day when I had enough to take the risk. It's amazing what you can do with a bit of budgeting, thrifty living and buying all your clothes on ebay. I did waver a bit, back in August, when markets were crashing all around and city financiers were fleeing to their summer homes in Barbados. However, faint heart never won fair lady, or something like that. Make lemon omelettes whilst the sun shines. That sort of thing.

I may be completely mad, or just unlucky, but I have to try to do this. The alternative is just not very pretty, really. I've been working full-time since I left college twenty-two years ago, without a break and something had to give. It was either the salary or my sanity and I'd rather be poor than unhappy. Of course, being poor is no guarantee of being happy, which is why I had better become the JK Rowling of romantic fiction. Or else.

Meanwhile the evil fuzz have given me a speeding ticket, which nearly caused me heart failure, when I thought I was going to be up before the beak. Had to phone a friendly brief, who chuckled at my failure to interpret the fixed penalty notice as a licence to print money for the boys in blue. He didn't relieve me of any cash, but he got a nice single malt nonetheless. I am the sort of a girl who knows how to do these things.

Even if I am on my way to the workhouse. In a handcart, via hell.