Cringing at the podcast

Ha! The guy that interviewed me for the podcast mailed me the edited version for my approval. It made me cringe - I thought I sounded like Janet Street-Porter on drugs. But I at least sounded coherent and intelligent and fluent, so that's ok. I played it to my beloved P later - he said I sounded more Estuarine than usual (Estuarine? Me, a Sussex girl?) but explained that's because Skype compresses the voice to squeeze it into the bandwidth and the higher pitches get lost. Result - my voice drops a semi-tone.

It'll be broadcast next week and I get a nice plug on the download page as well, which will hopefully bring in more clients.

I wrote a reply to someone on a networking forum about DIY press releases. I said hire a pro, but if you must do it yourself watch out for the pitfalls. I then scrawled around 500 words on how to do a decent press release. I had some great feedback, including from a contact in marketing, who said he'd been sending press releases for years and my post was the best, most comprehensive and concise summary he'd ever seen. And the site owner reposted it as an article. Pity I won't get paid for it, but hopefully it'll help a few people.

I'm cancelling work today - the parental is the vicinity and I'm obliged to do my filial duty and have lunch. I now face an hour's train ride each way at full fare because the bloody Royal Mail failed to deliver the renewal form for my disabled railcard to the correct address in time and by the time I got it, my previous card had already run out. The new one is only valid from tomorrow. Lunch with the parental will mean the loss of 6 hours' working time - she'd better appreciate my sacrifice because she has yet to grasp that being freelance and working from home does not mean it's not a proper job. I'm only available anyway because my major copywriting project is on hold and I'm filling in with other jobs that allow some flexibility. If I was still working as an employee she wouldn't see me at all.