Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

the money, Cass. And Lucy reckons there are quite a few of her parents’ friends who need dog walkers – all in this area. Apparently there was a guy who used to do it for them, but it turned out that he was a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, plus someone caught him smoking grass when in charge of the dogs, so he got the sack. It’s cash in hand, you’ll be out and about, getting some exercise instead of just sitting around here eating junk food all day … Please, Cassie?’
    The following day I set out to make my first dog-walking appointment. It was a bitterly cold and misty morning, the watery November sunlight barely breaking through the clouds. Cursing Jude all the way, I trudged across the muddy Common to Jedburgh Street where I was due to meet Mrs Bromell, the neighbour with the dodgy hip, to pick up the keys and collect the dogs.
    ‘Fifi and Trixie are their names,’ she told me. ‘Fifi’s the larger one. You’ll find their leads on the hook behind the door in the kitchen and the bags are under the sink.’
    ‘The bags?’
    ‘You know, for the poop.’
    Oh, Christ.
    I let myself into the house and was incredibly relieved to be greeted by a pair of small and meek-looking poodles who regarded me benignly with sad eyes, wagging their tails gently and showing no interest whatsoever in sinking their teeth into my ankles.
    Despite the cold, and the ignominy of being in the process of scooping fresh dog shit into a plastic bag at the precise moment at which three attractive young men jogged past me, dog walking turned out to be far less stressful than expected. Trixie and Fifi were docile and well behaved, they didn’t make a run for it the moment I released them from their leads and they didn’t get into any fights with other dogs. We walked briskly around the Common a couple of times – the first exercise I’d done in days – and I returned them home safely without incident.
    I was just letting myself out of the house when Mrs Bromell appeared behind me.
    ‘Hello, dear,’ she said, ‘you’ll be back again tomorrow morning then? I was wondering if you could take another couple of dogs out at the same time? The lady who lives a couple of houses down mentioned she’d like someone to take hers out – she’s got young children, you see, and she doesn’t really have time to walk the dogs in the morning. Bit of extra cash for you.’
    ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘No problem at all.’ Nothing to it, this dog-walking malarkey.
    Within days I had built up a growing client base. The cash-rich, time-poor of Clapham were queuing upto have me escort their pampered hounds around the Common. I had so many requests that I had to do two shifts, one in the morning and one in the evening – the money wasn’t exactly brilliant but since I appeared to have no prospect of any real employment it would have to do.
    I did have a couple of other schemes up my sleeve. I had noticed that on some of the less established job-hunting sites, there were advertisements of a more unusual nature. Some of them, like the ones demanding a female masseuse (photo required) were clearly to be avoided, but others looked more promising:
    The Research House is looking for females aged 30–45 to take part in a study on Mayonnaise. You must have children. The sessions will be held at our central London facility on November 10th. The time slots available are: 10.00am, 12.30pm and 2.45pm .
    We are offering an incentive of £50 for your time and opinions .
    OK, so I wasn’t the perfect candidate – but not being aged between thirty and forty-five, not having any children and not liking mayonnaise did not seem to me to be insurmountable obstacles.
    Another research study asked for people to take part in some market research for a global deodorant brand.
    Applicants should have a high level of spoken English, should be confident and comfortable speaking in front of people, and should be avid users of deodorant .
    Did using deodorant every day after a shower qualify one as an ‘avid user’? I wasn’t sure, but I put my name down for that one, too.
    In the meantime, I walked dogs. It was on my fifth or sixth evening outing that disaster struck. I was taking Susie, an enormous (albeit very friendly) Alsatian, a pair of skittish greyhounds named Thierry and Theo, a fat and slow Labrador retriever called Paddington and, last but not least, Stanley, a vicious little bastard of a Jack Russell. It was pouring with rain. I had