Best Days

The best days in the professional freelancer's life are 1) when you get paid; 2) when you get notice to invoice; 3) when you get more work. So the last couple of days have been pretty good. Notice received yesterday to invoice for a piece I wrote for Lake District Life about sailing on Ullswater (we recently bought a boat built in 1981 and sail it from Glenridding), same day as I had a new commission confirmed for Harpers Wine and Spirit. And today a further list of travel pieces agreed for Information Britain.

That is of course a bit too cynical and materialistic. There are other benefits: last week I had a little epiphany at a breakfast which included eggs from our own chickens, and home-made jam from blackcurrants grown on our allotment. It was sunny, and with no immediate deadline my son and I decided to go to the boat (how grand that sounds for a fibre-glass near antique) for the day. So count future memories for currently teenage son among the advantages of the freelance life.

It proved to be out best trip on Ullswater so far. As ever the wind was changeable and pretty light (there must be blowy days on the water there but so far we have missed them), we were lazy and only put up the mainsail, but still skimmed across the water happily free of gin-palaces. Add to my lengthy list of people who will face immediate execution when eventually I come to absolute power bell ends in £250k powerboats (jealous, me?) who break the water speed limit and create unpleasant wakes.

If anyone wants the full list for publication I can be at your service in moments. Same goes for my thoughtful book of political theory 'Things to Stuff up a Politician's Arse.' A follow-up volume exploring similar themes for celebrities is underway even now. Surely the Christmas hit for 2012. And curmudgeon that I am would suggest something for the Olympics along roughly the same lines. There are several very public figures whose rear ends I would love to fill with cash to the value of what we have spent on the world's biggest sports day. My Winston Smith Room 101 torture would have to be listening to Sebastian Coe's droning voice telling critics of The 2012 Games (never I fear heard on BBC other than by accident) how lucky we are to pay so many billions, about three times the original estimate too, for a few days of circus entertainment.

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.