The Accidental Journalist
I didn’t plan on a being a writer. By that, I mean it’s not the life I chose. It is however, the one that I have - not that I would wish to change it. Indeed, I would willingly pay to experience some of the things that journalism has allowed me to do. I’m what you could call an ‘accidental journalist’ becaffice:smarttags" /> None of the jobs I’ve had marked a path to this road; they shared nothing in common, other than that each peeled back a layer of life, exposing the riches on offer and gifting me with a thirst, a passion for the experiences within. That I can write though is academic; it is a means to an end, the glue that binds my experiences into a coherent narrative. My interest is in people and it’s what they do, the variety that life rubs off and which fate distributes that inspire me. I want to taste life’s riches, understand the incomprehensible, meet the aloof and experience the un I feel charmed, fortunate beyond words by the work I do. I choose my own assignments, guided by popular culture, the faces and people in the news, the events that shape our world. Although as a writer I can and have lent myself to any form of media – radio and TV broadcasting, news reporting – it is as a features writer and photographer that my strengths lie and these are the fields I most enjoy. Th Generally, I write for magazines – small and large, consumer and b My work immerses me in a diverse range of lives, gives me a taste of that which others live, eat and breath on a daily basis and it inspires me. It doesn’t pay terribly well, but the rewards more than compensate. Restaurant and hotel reviews give me a break from the monotony of life. Arranging them around car or motorcycle reviews give me suitable transport for any occasion, any day of the year. Got a wedding to go to? A call to BMW or Mercedes should suffice. Weekend away? A Mini Cooper, Merc SL or Jag XKR convertible should suit. Foreign assignments mean occasionally turning left on the aircraft. Concorde to I'm a bona fide member of the press corps with a Press Card and a portfolio of published work to show for it. Yet each foreign assignment at someone else's expense, every gadget I'm sent for review, every hotel and restaurant I stay and eat at to write about leaves me feeling like a schoolboy in his dad's suit. Each car that's delivered, fuelled and collected empty after I've added a tho Every hack, every writer I've ever met shares a similar story and harbours similar feelings. Freelancing is tough; it's a competitive market and money is tight, but the rewards and perks are out of this world. Most Bloggers could do what I do. Writing is half the battle. Add in your unique and diverse experience allied to a thirst for knowledge and a love of English and you could argue that you were born to do it. The following links lead to articles I've written on some of my most memorable assignments and cover a whole range of topics. Please feel free to comment - I appreciate your feedback.
· Interview With Actor Jeremy Sheffield Entry made 22nd March 2004: I've been meaning to blog about how I arrived at this point in my life for a while now, but having been asked just that question by Harmony yesterday has prompted me to do so. I’ve covered some of this ground in previous blog entries, but this is the first entry to explain how it all came about. It would be fair to say that just six short years ago, I felt utterly devoid of any sense of direction - both personally and professionally. After a ten-year career as an investment broker in the City, I knew I'd become tired of the frenetic, superficial lifestyle which was defined by money but I had no idea in which direction my future lie – I knew no other way of earning a living. I'd been successful at what I did and reaped the rewards, but being in that rarefied environment for so long skews one's frame of reference. In an industry where everyone who's any good earns in six figures and brags about their success, money is the currency by which that success is judged and that extends outside of the corporate balance sheet and into the personal lives of those of us who made the money. It's a competitive, hedonistic world where you're judged - and you in turn judge others - by the clothes they wear, the car they drive, the amount they earn. It's about who can out-drink, out-shag, outdo who. I was young when I joined the industry and not perhaps as worldly wise as my appearance might have suggested so when the success and the money came, I was happy to spend it. I lived the stereotypical City broker’s life. Success saw me headhunted but I was too busy enjoying the rewards to think about doing anything sensible with what I earned - the thought to do something was always there, but it was at the back of my mind, something I thought I'd do later. Yeah, right In 1997, at the peak of my success, I caught a curve ball which I hadn't seen coming: the department I'd been headhunted to just twelve months earlier was made redundant in its entirety and me with it, just another commodity in the people market. Redundancy in the city is surgically efficient – one minute you have a job, the next, security are escorting you to your desk to clear your personal possessions before accompanying you off the premises. Done, over, finished – do not pass Go, do not collect £200, leave your pass and car keys before you leave. The next morning when I awoke, the realisation hit me - from top to bottom in twelve months. From team player with my own secretary, obligatory Porsche and office to unemployed 29 year old. The news of my newly unemployed status coincided with moving house and I’d been planning to take some time off anyway but having had the decision made for me, I looked for a positive to come from the mess. I took a decision then which although I did not know it, led me right to where I am now. On the spur of the moment, I decided to take a year out and spend some time at home, with my wife and daughter. I’d received a reasonable amount as compensation for the loss of my contract, but even so, it meant a tightening of our belts and a change of outlook. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. I took up photography seriously, learned to cook, built a computer from scratch and learned every thing I could about PCs. And I resurrected an old habit, starting and maintaining a journal, writing prolifically on life, the universe and everything but the thought of writing professionally just didn't occur to me, not then - that was a germ of idea which my mind was yet to give rise to. When I was working in the City, I used to commute by train, walking along Moorgate each morning to my office. I remember seeing the motorcycle couriers racing past and enjoyed the contrast when I was under pressure or a deal had gone wrong. Those were the times when I’d look enviously at the freedom their job represented - answerable to no one, masters of their own destiny, the ultimate urban warriors. Suited and booted, I was as far removed from what they were doing as it was possible to get but on occasion, the grass looked curiously greener from where I was looking. Sometime in that year off, I awoke one morning with a previously non-existent passion to learn to ride a motorbike. Bikes didn't exist in my universe - they never had. Call it an early mid-life crisis if you like, but here I was staring the age of 30 in the face, and I wanted...no needed to learn to ride. I booked myself on a direct access course over three days with the test at the end and by the following weekend, I had a full motorcycle licence - the passport if I but knew it, to another life. It was only toward the end of that year off that I seriously considered working as a motorcycle courier. Money was running out and I had no desire to return to the city - being away, amongst 'normal' people had shown me how distorted my view of reality had become and I didn't like the person I'd been. I had offers to return but kept making excuses and gradually, arrived at the decision which brought me here. I'm quite focused as a person - if I commit to something, I want to learn, assimilate and fight my way to the top and the desire to ride had been burning away at me all the time I'd been off. Looking back now, it seems foolhardy in the extreme but I saw working as a courier as ‘kill or cure’ – quite literally. It would be a baptism of fire, but through exposing myself to some of the hardest riding in motorcycling, I'd rapidly gain experience as an accomplished biker or not get there at all. It would be like playing real-time Super Nintendo but without extra lives, gap chasing through some of the worst traffic in the western world. So that was what I did. And I loved it. I learned early on that my peers – that eclectic bunch of men and women who ride bikes professionally – came from all walks of life and each had a unique motivation to do what they did. There were those who did it because they were unqualified to do anything else; those who were using the job to fund dreams, those who had dropped out and those who simply loved to ride. Jobbing actors, musicians, ex-builders, drug dealers…everyone’s background unique but unusual. And here, you weren’t judged by anything other than you ability to get on with people. Who could tell the best joke, was prepared to get the coffees in, help out. I left my past behind, fitted in. I was happy. It was a steep learning curve – I went from no experience on two wheels to riding one of the biggest motorcycles out there, a BMW K1100, the infamous ‘flying brick’ that was the mainstay of the Met Police’s motorcycle fleet, for up to 16 hours and several hundred miles a day. Riding where my earnings depended upon my ability to deliver quicker, more often and further afield than anyone else. I worked my way from company to company but within six months, I had 30,000 miles under my belt and felt utterly at one with my bike. To put that in perspective, the ‘average’ mileage for bikers as a whole is 4,000 miles per annum. I was doing more than that each month, and through some of the I remember what changed and where it happened though; I was riding back from Without giving it a second though, the next morning, I called up the editor of a major bike magazine and explained what I’d been thinking. He asked me to send him a sample of my writing and that night, I sat and penned 2,000 words on how I’d arrived at the gates of a career as a courier. Without really thinking about it, I tapped away at the keyboard and being reasonably pleased with the result, printed it off and sent it off. The following week, the editor rang me with a proposition; he wanted to run the 2,000 word article I’d sent him as a feature and on the strength of that piece, was prepared to offer me a monthly opinion column writing about life ‘behind ‘bars’ – from the saddle of a London courier’s bike. I was delighted – my first submitted work and I’d secured a deal as a columnist. That led, surprisingly quickly, to the real manna from heaven: new bikes, clothing and equipment, straight from the manufacturers, for road tests. The editor’s thinking was that, with the mileage and style of riding I was engaged in, what better way could there be to get the feel for the best the manufacturers could offer. So a stream of the latest bikes and kit would be delivered to me, where I’d ride them hard, race them on track and then write some words which would appear in the magazine a month later as a road or product test. I spent a year or so doing this before the MD of the courier company I was working for at the time approached me with the offer of a job as operations manager, running the business side of the operation. I’d spent two years on the road by now, and despite the initial challenges and insights the job had given me, life on the road was making me cynical and I’d got to the stage where it no longer presented me with the challenges that I now know I need to keep me motivated. So I accepted his offer and worked on broadening my writing horizons, approaching magazines editors outside of motorcycling with ideas for features. I networked, building relationships with photographers, other journalists, and gradually, a stream of commissions began to develop. I’d follow my heart – think of things I knew about, or had wanted to experience – and with a commission in hand to write about it, set about making it happen. At the courier company, the job changed over the year and I found myself by default in more of a PR oriented role, raising the company’s profile with the outside world. The MD was happy for me to use my networking skills and contacts in the world of media for work which benefited the company and in return, was flexible with me using work resources to develop my writing career, taking time off, etc. It was a quid pro quo which benefited us both. Gradually, over the next year or two, things began to snowball rapidly, commission following commission, each assignment leading on to something else. I became more adept at spotting opportunities, and had all my experience of working in the City to draw from when marketing myself or selling ideas. My previous career had brought me into contact with a surprisingly wide variety of people from the corporate world, and I found doors opening through renewing old contacts here. By 2002, it had become clear to me that I’d reached a point where I could no longer conscionably attend my day job. Though it had been a gradual process, with the benefit of hindsight, I found myself at a point where I was spending almost all my time in the office working on my own projects, almost to the exclusion of what I was being paid to do there. I took the decision to make the jump, and by agreement with my boss, began to spend less and less time at the office, gradually handing my responsibilities over to someone else. Mid way through that year, I landed a twelve month contract to edit a motorcycle magazine which gave me the impetus I needed to strike out alone, and that’s what I did. I made the break and I honestly haven’t looked back since.
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20.8.03 15:04
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