PicoBlog

Running through Notting Hill Gate tube station, already ten minutes late for an appointment to sell my engagement ring, from the moment I opened my eyes, I knew the day was gonna be up-shit-creek bad. Reaching across the bedside table, my hand searches for a phone.  Due to start a new job in a few hours, I didn’t have enough money for the tube fair. A startled mole, my face scrunched in unimaginable ways, microscopic eyes blinded by a harsh light blaring from the small object known as my iPhone, “Morning darling”, I tap. “Sorry to ask, but mind lending me a tenner?” There. I’ve said it. No going back now unless I retract the statement on grounds of delirium. Can’t do that, unless I fancy walking five miles. “And could you send it to my Starling account? First Direct is so overdrawn it’ll be swallowed up. I start that swanky new fashion job today”. 

When things became financially stretched early last year, like many middle-class people in my neighbourhood with Farrow and Balled walls and bills to pay, I put my house on Air BnB. Trying to make sense of a dwindling budget and higher bills, I set up another bank account to separate ‘rental’ income from other earnings. Planning to use the Air BnB cash to pay regular household necessities such as council tax, I’d never be accepted for an additional bank account today, even if I begged. A notification in regal purple signals Claire has generously added £100 to my Starling account. What an absolute legend. With no kids to get to school, I leg it out the door and treat myself to a Pret coffee at South Kensington station upon arrival. My first takeaway coffee of 2024, it feels like drinking liquid gold. 

It’s amazing what I used to take for granted when I had spare cash. With £93 in my bank, ‘at least I can afford to feed the kids this weekend, I mutter to myself, eyeing the shine on my Tabitha Simmons shoes wondering where it all went wrong.

But if Experian is to be believed, going from a credit score of excellent to poor in the space of twelve months, now the party’s over, I’m left feeling utterly destabilised. 

From around mid-October last year to last weekend, when my friends were moments away from performing a citizen's arrest but chose instead to get together and form a money-related intervention, I’ve felt far from okay. Divorce is brutal like that. Don’t get me wrong; there’ve been many months spent on an unbeatable high swinging from grubby John Lewis light fittings in a newly rented home or two. Dating lovers, guffawing late into the night at crazies on Hinge, partying with friends on kid-free nights and eating humous for dinner at 1 am was fun. But if Experian is to be believed, going from a credit score of excellent to poor in the space of twelve months, now the party’s over, I’m left feeling utterly destabilised. 

“Have you signed on?” asked an Instagram follower last week.

According to a report commissioned by the Financial Fairness Trust, an unstable income is a job that is either lowly paid or self-employed. Entitled ‘Caught in The Middle’, the report describes how families with incomes of between £30,000 and £60,000 per annum, aka “nice”, “normal” middle-class types, are struggling to make ends meet, as for single parents within this income bracket (i.e. me), earning enough to keep the wolves from the door is becoming a significant problem. According to the same report, an unstable home is defined as renting privately in a market where monthly rent can increase without governance to the point of being priced out. I own my home, so I choose my words carefully, however, in all seriousness, if things continue this way, this time next year my house will be repossessed and the kids will have to live with their father full-time. What then? I sofa surf my way around London? So, tell me: is it ok to describe my situation as borderline middle-class poverty now, or should I wait until I'm living out of a suitcase before adopting the catchy moniker? Fuck knows…

“Have you signed on?” asked an Instagram follower last week. My reply would’ve been so complex I couldn’t bring myself to answer her truthfully. Firstly, there are the dreaded three-month payment terms for the various consulting jobs I take on, and when I am paid, despite not having had an income for three months, my account lights up like a slot machine on Brighton Pier. I imagine the staff at a First Direct call centre based somewhere in the outer suburbs of Glasgow shouting, ‘She’s several thousand pounds in credit, Jim! Come and Look!’ At that point, I’d have to inform the benefits office, who’d put my account on hold, meaning I’d owe them money, which obvs I’d forget to pay, and off I pop to jail for two years. ‘Hello, yes, I’ve applied’, I wrote back to the well-meaning woman who then went on to suggest I rent out my daughter’s box bedroom via the government's ‘rent a room’ scheme. ‘You can earn £7,500 rent tax-free!’ Confused and scared, I switched off my phone and screamed into an expensive pillow bought during a time of my life when I cared about such frippery. As of four months ago, I couldn’t care less about fancy homeware. 

At the end of last year, after dropping the kids off at school, me wearing pyjamas, slippers, sunglasses, bed-hair, I’d go back to home and crawl back in bed.

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