Not even being on holiday can stop the Friday Flash. Actually I was just going to drop an old story in here this week, but “27 ways to avoid doing any actual work” came to me fully formed at 3:15am on Wednesday night, I sat up, hand wrote it in a notepad and transcribe it here for the first time.

I could get seriously used to this sea-side/no-job-to-go-to lark, sitting watching the waves and tapping away at stories is, well, it’s what the dream of being a writer is about, isn’t it? Doing something you love without pressure. Of course, if I was doing this thing for real, it’d be work and therefore probably not as much fun.

Anyway, for the last time from (very nearly) sunny Newquay, enjoy.

27 ways to avoid doing any actual work

The editor called at about five. I’d been waiting for the call, so I let the answerphone take
it.

As I say, I’d been expecting the call, but not for it to start: “Fucking hell, Wilksy, this is the best thing you’ve ever written -”

I snatched the phone from the cradle.

Brilliant, she said.

Could have easily have been just another hack job, she said, as if that’ what she’d been expecting.

But this! This had charm. This had elegance. This had brio!

Brio?

I had to look that one up.

And not just on time, but a whole day early. I must really be turning over a new leaf, she said, and we both had a good chuckle about that.

I took all the praise pretty well, I thought – given the circumstances. I tried to be modest, which was easy enough, and to reflect some of the credit back onto her enlightened editorship – which was harder.

Anyway, she finished, if I could keep writing stuff like this there’d always be work for me as long as she was editor of Boom!

I have the magazine now.

She’s really done credit to the article. Six spreads, beautifully illustrated and laid out.

And she’s right the article is great. Insightful. Witty. Urbane without being too wanky.

There’s no doubt about it, “27 ways to avoid doing any actual work” is the best thing I’ve ever written.

Or rather, it would have been.

If I hadn’t been busy doing number sixteen.