Freelancers go wild

Three years ago, I left my position as an editor at one of the UK’s largest publishing houses to become a full-time author. I’d been lucky enough to get a publishing deal with HarperCollins and was amazed by how many other freelancers there seemed to be, all hanging out in local cafés and bars behind their MacBooks. In fact, more people are self-employed now than at any point in the past 40 years: according to the Office for National Statistics, that includes nearly a fifth of all Londoners. No wonder it often felt like being back in an office, only with better coffee and flexible hours.

But while there were significant advantages to my new life, the thing I missed most about working in an office was the annual Christmas party and all the gossip and toe-curling embarrassment that goes with it. Highlights I remember from my full-time gainful employment include an Olympics-themed party, featuring the sight of senior management in Lycra shorts and tight vests; a former colleague (while dressed as the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz) telling her line manager she loved him; another colleague, upon crawling out of a party in his boxer shorts, realising he had at some point in the evening discarded his inflatable Christmas pudding outfit and, with it, every shred of dignity. Rather like the Nativity play at school, for me it had come to mark the beginning of the festive party period.

And I love parties: going to them and writing about them. My new novel, The Book of Lost & Found, starts with one: a wild 1920s affair. So I resented having the Christmas party opportunity wrested from me. Then, a few years ago, my fellow freelancers — Marina, a designer, Camilla, a milliner, and George, a photo-grapher and bar owner — and I agreed that we wanted some premature (and immature) festive cheer of our own. We wanted to wake up on a weekday with sore heads and be able to blame it all on Christmas.

So we dressed up, invited our mates and made merry. And because we are a creative bunch, our productions have got bigger and better every year. One Christmas we transformed a friend’s photography studio in Shoreditch into a magical woodland with an enchanted forest theme. We gathered foliage from the park, bought papier mâché insects from Portobello Market and unearthed a taxidermy weasel from a relative’s attic.

Another year we had Christmas karaoke on a friend’s rooftop using a machine from Argos, belting out Mariah Carey to the twinkling city skyline. We’ve had an obscure treasure hunt, an idea gleaned from my research on Bright Young Things-style partying in the 1920s, when partygoers used taxis to ride around London on a competitive mission to bring back the most dazzling loot. We’ve played homemade Secret Santa, which featured mince pies from a chef, specially sourced jewellery from a designer, badly written bespoke poems by me, and hand-painted baubles from an artist.

I’d like to say the parties are an opportunity for productive networking. They’re not — we have a rule that too much work talk prohibits the essential silliness — but it is an opportunity to make new freelance friends as our web of invitees has grown.

This year the suggestion of a novelty Christmas jumper theme was swiftly vetoed in favour of a decadent underground banquet, which we will be holding in George’s newly opened bar at the Bermondsey Arts Club. Chef Dougie will provide a cornucopia of food, including piles of exotic fruit and towering cakes, while George will whip up seasonal red Negronis. We’ll slip away guilt-free from our laptops for a 4pm kick-off and once the banquet is over, chairs will be kicked aside and the Electro swing will be cranked up for some dancing and unapologetic debauchery, without worrying about any cringeworthy all-office emails the next morning, or disciplinary action from HR. In the early hours we’ll stumble out and join the throngs of office-party stragglers in the queue at the kebab shop, smug in the knowledge that our alarms won’t be going off in three hours’ time.

Photograph by Rupert Pearce, styled by Sophie Paxton