Tempted by the Dark Side

On Friday, where I excelled even my own preconceived ideas of how obscenely driven I could be by guilt, I attended a voluntary client meeting. Until 6pm.

This meeting, however, took a turn that I wasn't expecting.

I admit, I instigated this meeting largely for my own gain. I would hopefully not have to return to London a few days after settling in Yorkshire and was routing for a few brownie points en route, as it was a Friday afternoon and even most clients are fairly relaxed at this point in the week.

In the meeting, with the client that I feared, the very same client that had reduced me to tears on more than one occasion, the client who had called my work 'crap' before in one memorable email, offered me a job.

If I were to ever want to work for them in-house, the door was open and there was even a strong black coffee waiting for me and a stapler with my name on a bit of card selotaped onto the back of it sat on my desk.

The client enthused about my work to what may have been an uncomfortable degree had I not been so utterly shocked. I did the usual WebStress trick of changing the conversation swiftly around on several occasions to flatter the client and to give me time to pin down the corners of my mouth that were trying their best to escape into an unflattering and incredibly unsophisticated grin.

I had heard that the client had praised my work in previous meetings, but this had often been followed by what I would describe as not wonderfully constructive feedback, to say the least. But here they were, saying these really....nice things to me.

On the train home, my mind bounded over the last year I had spent working with the client. I allowed myself to imagine, as we lurched our way through the suburbs of South London and I steadied myself under someone's armpit (not previously being used to commuting at 6pm), what it would be like if I worked in such a beautiful office, where people regularly used the word 'gorgeous', where they enthused about their business, which is something decidedly lacking from agency life.

I had decided before I joined the current agency, that I would never again work for another such organisation. I longed to be immersed within the company itself, where I could flourish creatively rather than be belted down with budgetary restrictions. Where meetings were spontaneous, where expensive coffee was plentiful and they had those nice biscuits which really are nice, where people waxed lyrical about their latest product or service to their neighbour, where 'drinks' and 'nibbles' were second nature, where people wore pointy shoes.

But this is an ideal that, once I trialled a little of it in my current company, tasted bitter sweet. On the few occasions I attended drinks after work it meant that I didn't get home til late, I faced enduring the tube with a hangover, I wasn't with my boyfriend, I didn't get my warm ribena. I suck at being a city girl, a socialite. And, if I'm honest, I can't even wear pointy shoes because my feet are too wide (if I do they have to be a size too big and I look unnervingly like the wicked witch of the west).

Now, working at home once again, the word 'casual' has taken on a whole new level. I've even been wearing jogging bottoms around the house a good few hours before going to bed (which is as a result of finding out within the first hour of being in a house run, and I mean run, by puppies, that any clothes you wear within the house will automatically be deemed 'casual' within a few minutes of being introduced to a furry friend and you will only ever put anything vaguely smart on approximately 30 seconds before you leave the house).

My SP has a pair of wellies and I may well get mine couriered up from Cornwall so we can really indulge in the stereotypical lesbian label when out walking that seems to have been impaled on us in our partners' absence (we actually had this for a good old while before they left, but I won't dwell on that). She mentioned the other day that things were seriously worrying when you'd turn up at the pub with dog-bags in your pocket. I laughed until it happened to me yesterday at the gym. And, to top it all off, we had a text message conversation about the girl pup's bowel movements this morning.

And I've only been here 72 hours.

My boyfriend told me he'd dreampt I'd taken the job, and we'd moved back to London. He asked me what I thought about that.

I did it all wrong. I lived and worked on opposite sides of London for the entire time I was there, apart from a brief spell where I worked in Islington, and indulged myself with a cup of soya tea from Pret on a morning, feeling extremely cosmopolitan. I spent my time commuting. Myself and my boyfriend had an unhealthy alarm set. We were creatures of the early morning, where others were buried beneath their duvets, comforted in their extra few hours.

On this last train journey home, I daydreamed of a postage sized garden, of a walk to work, of 'gorgeous' heels that I could walk effortlessly in (and less like the transvestite walk I seem to have embarrassingly adopted) and were envied by colleagues, of not shopping in Matalan but in places that have a sales assistant that wants to help you and offers you advice, of makeup that wasn't from Rimmel, of drinks in posh bars with my boyfriend after work, of a life that I never would have, because it just isn't me.

So now, I'm sat in my 'scrags', with two really lovely puppies for company (even if one of them has pissed on my bed twice today and I'm not sure if I should take that as a sign that she likes me or really, really doesn't), I can see a field from my window, my SP is on her way home for a cup of tea in the sunshine with me and am spending my days not commuting for 3 hours.

I won't be going back to London. Not unless its for visits and for meetings.

But I can imagine feeling that pang of jealousy, seeing my friends indulge easily and happily in a life that I never quite managed, I never quite got right.