Do you know a flake fatale?
No shows. Repeat cancellations. And all excused by ‘flakiness’
COSMO LANDESMANI
t was the third time in a row that she had
cancelled our date for drinks. The first
time she’d forgotten. The second time she
remembered a previous engagement and the
third time she claimed she’d got the dates
mixed up. The next day I got the text she
always sends: ‘Sorry darling, I’m such a flake!’
I used to have friends. Now I have flakes —
people who are always screwing up arrange-
ments to meet. Flake has become the catch-all
explanation and excuse for the bad manners
or bad behaviour of friends and loved ones.
We all know about ladies who lunch. But
what about the ones who forget you were even
having lunch? This kind of woman — let’s
call her the flake fatale — will feign remorse
and say: ‘I’m such a flake! Can we do it next
week? Please?’ Or when she fails to turn up
to a party where you had planned to meet
—because she got pissed at another party —
she will say with pride: ‘How flakey was that!’
I know a girl who forgot to tell her
boyfriend that he’d been dumped and their
Valentine dinner cancelled. The poor guy
waited at the restaurant for nearly two hours.
I asked her how could she be so cruel? ‘I’m
not cruel,’ she protested, ‘just a bit flakey.’
Men can be flakey too, but they tend to
reserve the tag for other men. As in ‘that
guy is such a flake!’ It’s too fluffy a term
for blokes. So a man will confess to being a
‘screw-up’, an ‘idiot’ or, in rare moments of
honesty, ‘a total shit’ — but never a flake.
We live in an age when we make dates
to see our friends — then we don’t see our
friends. We cancel. Once. Twice. Three times.
Even four. This was once considered rude;
now it’s the norm. A firm date for dinner
is just the first step in a series of broken
arrangements. When I complain, younger
friends tell me to ‘chill’, because every body
does it. Lately, when I make a date to see a
friend, I ask: ‘Would you care to cancel now
— or wait till the day we’re meant to meet?’
No one wants to consider this as rude; it’s
just flakey. Your archetypal flake fatale is in
her late twenties and works in the media or
the arts — anywhere where being ‘flakey’ is
considered rather cute and doesn’t get you
fired for being incompetent. Just try playing
the flake card if you’re a barrister or doctor.
The flake fatale is adored and indulged by
her friends. She is often charming and incor-
rigible in equal measures. Her messy, disor-
ganised life makes you feel better about yourown. But the downside is that her chaotic life
often spills into yours — and you get 3 a.m.
phone calls asking for advice or help out of
tricky situations. ‘Darling, I’m pissed with two
naked men in the back of an Uber. I don’t
know where I am, who they are and how I
will get home — what shall I do?’
When you call her for advice, she can
never talk and help you because she’s always
in a ‘mad rush’ for a meeting — one that was
booked for the previous week — or facing a
deadline that was days ago.
Flakes should not be confused with
snowflakes. The latter is a popular term for
someone who is oversensitive about their
politically correct opinions and beliefs; a
flake is someone who is totally insensitiveabout you. Of course she will say sorry and
apologise, but the flake fatale doesn’t really
think she’s done anything wrong. They never
suffer from guilt — just hangovers.
You can see the appeal of confessing
to being a flake. It’s way of saying to your
friends, No, I’m not a self-absorbed, inconsid-
erate, thoughtless narcissist — I just happen
to be a bit scatterbrained and totally disor-
ganised. Playing the flake card appears to be
an admission of guilt, but actually it’s a bit
of a boast. It suggests that you’re endearing-
ly eccentric and delightfully ditzy, unlike all
those efficient nine-to-five office drones.
The term flake, with its connotations of
something insignificant or sweet like the
Cadbury’s chocolate bar, diminishes the
misdemeanour and demands instant forgive-
ness. How can you possibly take offence or
get cross with me, asks the flake fatale: I mean
no real harm. I’m just a bit flakey.
Being a flake means you never have to
take responsibility for your actions. You
can get away with just about anything if you
claim to be flakey — ‘Oops, sorry I shagged
your boyfriend. I’m such a flake!’
I just wish my flakey friends would be
honest with me — and themselves — and,
instead of confessing to be flakes, would
admit to being totally thoughtless.SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST
Cosmo Landesman and Freya Wood on flakes.A fi rm date for dinner is
just the fi rst step in a series
of broken arrangementsAs a result of
George Osborne taking up five jobs on
top of his role as MP for Tatton, an ethics
watchdog wants to know what the public
thinks about MPs having other jobs. One
problem is that people’s low opinion of
MPs makes balanced judgment difficult.
The same was true in the ancient world.
There were no ‘parties’ with ‘policies’
in democratic Athens, only ‘speakers’
(the equivalent of our ‘politicians’)
at the weekly Assemblies, often
holding some office, and attempting
to persuade the listening citizens to
vote for their solution to whatever
problem the Assembly was facing.
Comic poets obviously laid into them,
characterising them all as ‘robbers’ and
‘blackmailers’, ‘shameless’ and greedy
for bribes, contrasting them with past
generations, who had been ‘frugal’
and ‘self-denying’, men of action, not
fancy talkers. Speakers equally laid into
other speakers, presenting themselves
as innocents in the dirty world of
politics, while their opponents were
hardened deceivers, ‘artists in words’ and
‘concocters of arguments’. One speaker
said: ‘In the past, you (the Assembly)
were master of the politicians ... now the
opposite is true, and you have become a
sort of servant and appendage of theirs.’
Precisely: such is the prejudice which
MPs like Osborne face. So how did
Athenians deal with it? The people they
applauded were those commemorated
on the thousands of inscriptions set
up in honour of those who poured
their own efforts and resources into
serving the public interest. As Aristotle
said, personal outlay relating to gods,
offerings, buildings and sacrifices gained
a man honour, as well as ‘those [outlays]
which are a mark of proper ambition
for the good of the community’. Indeed,
one speaker even argued that bribes
were acceptable ‘on condition that
they furthered and did not oppose the
public good’!
On these principles, the ethics
watchdog might wonder if Osborne’s
editorship of the London Evening
Standard (say) would be likely to be
recognised with a public monument
for services to the community, raised
by proud inhabitants of his Cheshire
constituency. After all, those are the
people to whom he owes his first duty as
their MP.
— Peter Jones
ANCIENT AND MODERN
Osborne and the Athenians