Tuesday 23 August 2011

Back to Blogging

I was so impressed by the blog of one of my former classmates at UCLAN's Magazine Journalism MA, the brilliant Johanna Derry, that I felt inspired to begin blogging again. Too many of the other blogs I have read previously have been semi-literate, self-indulgent and less than informative. So fired with new enthusiasm for the medium I will give it another go.

As a freelance there have to be compensations for (relative) lack of money, and the foremost of them for me is variety. Recently I spent one day of a trip to East Anglia on research for three separate pieces: in the morning I went to Potter Heigham to take new pix of the Wherry Albion, and chat to a few of the members of the trust keeping her afloat. The early afternoon was spent on a tour of the Adnams Distillery in Southwold, which proved throughly enjoyable though driving kept me from any real tasting. Following that I met John Miller, a former Reuters correspondent in Moscow (whose book All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening I can heartily recommend) regarding a gardening feature about George Orwell that I hope will appear in Grow Your Own (the curse of the unconnected and even after five years unknown writer is the "write it and we'll see" offer). That is variety.

The Adnams visit was in response to an offer, at the time feeling more like a threat, after I had given a poor review to their First Rate Gin, and has generated a commisison for Harpers Wine and Spirit, and in turn another for them, which says something for getting out of the office.



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