Free Twenty Something by Iain Hollingshead Page A

Poett.’
Tuesday 15th March
    Flatmate Fred’s finally done sufficient internet ‘research’ to raise the money for the stolen winter-flowering cherry. He’s also been offered a full-time job doing data entry in a real office with real people. He was data enterer of the month. March must have been a bad month without precedent in the www.crapjobs.com community.
    However, the ‘ghastliness’ of his brief contact with the working world has convinced him to give his writing career a serious shot again. Anything is better than waking up at a regular time each day, getting dressed and commuting to an office job, he maintains. As he puts it, PJs versus P45s — simple choice.
Wednesday 16th March
    Lucy wrote me a very long and very touching letter today (I haven’t received a handwritten letter since school) outlining all the fun times we’d had together. It was uplifting and sad at thesame time. It dripped with nostalgia but it wasn’t expectant. I think she was trying to wrap up everything that we’d had into a neat bundle, compartmentalise it, celebrate it and move on. It made me cry — things had been so crap in the last few months that I’d blanked out all the happy times. But it was also a weight off my shoulders. ‘Closure’, I think the word is. It’s a good word.
    I also had some apologising to do. Mr Poett is a nice man and doesn’t deserve to be rung up at two-thirty in the morning to be told to go and copulate with himself. So I wrote him one of the most awkward letters of my life.
    And it’s here that I feel there is a gap in all our educations. Instead of teaching us stupid role plays in foreign languages — ‘You’re in charge of a broken-down minibus of schoolchildren in Dieppe; explain to the garage mechanic that the carburettor is leaking’ — our schools should have stuck to situations closer to home. Perhaps GCSE English could include a letter-writing module: ‘Whilst inebriated, you telephoned your ex-girlfriend’s father in the early hours to complain about her sleeping with your best friend. In no more than 200 words, write an apology note to the father. Remember to write on alternate lines and leave sufficient time to read over your answer.’
    And then there was Rick, who had left a series of long answering-machine messages trying to explain himself. I had begun to feel like a dick for my reaction last Friday. And so I went round to his flat for our second make-up session in two months.
    â€˜I’m so sorry, mate.’ Thump on back. ‘Let’s never let something like this come between us again.’ Double thump on back, pause, another thump, stifled sob, etc., etc.
    And then I went home and texted his twin sister, Katie, to see if she’d like a drink sometime. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Thursday 17th March
    I walked in on a conversation between Buddy and Rupert (bald) after lunch today. It went something like this:
    Buddy: ‘The problem with girls in the city is that they are valuable, overpriced commodities. Even the fattest and ugliest are heavily bid up, like private equity deals in the Middle East.’
    Rupert (bald): ‘Yeah, mate, you’re so right. All the best girls are highly leveraged (and they know it). And then there’s the exit strategies to worry about. Very few of them are keen on trade sales.’
    Buddy: ‘Haw, haw. These days I like to play the international markets with a diverse portfolio stretching across different jurisdictions and time zones. The Thai market has long been strong on liquidity, and Vietnam is catching up fast in depth.’
    Rupert (bald): ‘I agree. I used to like the US market, but it started getting too litigious.’
    Buddy: ‘Haw, haw. Emerging markets are often better than more mature markets in my experience, despite the difficulties in securing deal flow.’
    Rupert (bald): ‘That’s the