The creeping rise of the Get Aheads
Advice up front The bookahead brigade are ruining Christmas (and pretty much everything else)
‘I didn’t think about it early enough’ is now a bit like saying: ‘I am past it. Just leave me here’
OMG! I have missed the last Ocado slot before Christmas. This time last week I went online (surreptitiously, because the husband thinks my pre-christmas anxiety is off the scale so I’m obliged to hide the true extent of it), got to the checkout, clicked on the delivery date and, I kid you not, the nearest available slot was on the 21st. And that was at 10.30pm. Not funny.
Oh come on, what’s a day or two earlier, you may be thinking. The mince pies will last. Relax. Chill out. But you would be missing the point, which is the steady creep of “Getting Aheadedness”. My low-level anxiety – hitherto referred to as my Christmas Weirdness – is not, it turns out, some First World neurosis, peculiar to women of a certain age. It’s an entirely justified response to the hyper-organised army of people (mainly women), who are making Getting Ahead the new normal.
These Get Aheads have moved the goalposts, and you are now toast if you don’t play by their rules, or that’s how it feels. Wait until December and you will be left gazing at empty shelves, settling for turkey crown, frozen cheese, and those weird crackers that look like medieval jesters. You used to score points for spontaneity, throwing last-minute parties and shopping in last-minute sales – the Get Aheads have put paid to all that.
They booked a twinkly pre-christmas lunch with the family months ago. (No room at the inn for the losers who only thought about it last week). They got tickets for the hot show on the day it was announced (they’ve booked Hamilton last summer and it doesn’t open until December).
Never mind Christmas, the Get Aheads have confirmed Morocco at Easter, and the house in Cornwall for next August, and the one after that. All the things you might think about in advance, they’re thinking about three months before that, six months to a year if they’re otherwise under-employed. Wouldn’t it be nice to head off to that new boutique hotel for a last-minute dirty weekend? Nope, the Get Aheads have got that block-booked until the middle of 2019. Ooh, quite like the look of those boots; sorry, madam, but they all went to Get Aheads, you’ll need to be quicker than that.
It’s dispiriting always feeling one beat behind but, worse, the Get Aheads are getting in our heads, speeding up life, so that even if everything is great that’s no longer quite enough. Your new worry is what you could be missing out on in the future, if you don’t stay one step ahead.
A Get Ahead would have checked out the student accommodation options before there were none left. A Get Ahead would have known to book a place to stay for the wedding as soon as the invitation landed, as well as a train ticket when it was cheap. Get Aheads do not get caught napping. And “I didn’t think about it early enough” is now a bit like saying: “I am past it. Just leave me here. I’m not going to make it.” Getting Ahead is catching because the alternative is getting left behind.
Only, once you’ve sorted one future problem you just move on to the next and the next and the next. It’s not healthy, it’s not life-enhancing, and it’s not fun. It can actually kill the fun altogether, especially if you start trying to pin your friends down to a plan a year in advance, and then get cross when they won’t commit.
The cure, maybe, is a return to first-come first-served, the way it is in my local gastropub. You can’t book. You can’t get a table until all of you are there. You can’t get ahead in any sense, so you just have to take it as it comes. It’s not how Get Aheads like to do things, and boy it feels good.