Learning curve

Just over a fortnight ago,on a whim, I applied to do a top-up training course. Today, I completed the first week of intensive workshops. I'm pretty shattered and tattered but it's been most interesting, for a number of reasons.

The biggest shock to the system was learning to commute again after a 6-year hiatus. Although I'm naturally a very early riser, I fought daily against the excruciatingly loud digital bleep of my alarm clock at 5.30am. On at least 2 mornings I was sorely tempted to roll over and crash out again. I don't know why this is - my insomnia frequently wakes me that early and I'm happy to get up, stick the kettle on and crack on with work. But I dislike jumping straight in the shower, deciding what the hell to wear and putting my face on for the day while it's still dark outside. Catching a bus at 7.10 is anathema, sitting on a crowded train even more so. It's bearable - just - as long as I have a large carton of coffee, a paper and don't have to talk to anyone. By today, I felt I'd just about got the hang of things again - nicely in time to unlearn them.

People. I'm naturally sociable, but equally like my own company and frequently crave solitude. This week has taught me that freelancing from home can definitely turn one into a misanthrope. Working largely alone for so long meant I had to learn to work in a team again, something long since forgotten (and, truth be told, after my last spell as a staffer coping with a colleague who was literally bonkers and made my team's life hell, something probably best left behind). I had a huge midweek bust-up with one of the other trainees, inevitable under the circumstances. It was resolved next day but it's served to remind me that in Q110 I'm probably going to have to button the lips that are normally left to speak as bluntly as they care to.

As for the rest, it was hard not to be aware of the age gap between myself and the other gang members. Interestingly, I was way ahead of them when it came to the geek stuff. Although I'm probably an early adopter, I generally expect 20-summats to be ahead of me there. So it was with some surprise that I discovered that 10 years of blogging, plus proficiency in Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of other social media stuff put me furlongs ahead. I was bored and a little frustrated, therefore, during the first couple of days while we were taught how to blog and exploit social media platforms. In the latter half of the week, I did learn new stuff - how to make a digital movie and audio slideshow, for example.

For me, the most bizarre bonus was undoubtedly the unexpected friendship I seem to have struck up with an investigative journalist who dropped in to teach the group how to dig up information on the deep web. A lot of the workshop was, again, stuff I already knew from doing this kind of work in the past but we not only had that in common but also some other things. We swapped cards, Facebooked each other and before you could shout "publishing deal" we were mooting the idea of writing a book together. How weird is that? No weirder than spending 2 hours in someone's company and feeling like you've known them for ages.

Some other points of note: I've had so little free time this week that I've been coming home to a mountain of email that I've had less than 2 hours to sift through in the evening, dealing with the urgent ones and mainly deleting the rest before collapsing into bed. I failed to put the bins out. I cleaned none of the house. The boy was undoubtedly very unhappy at being locked in all day for 5 days in a row. I was so tired one night I overslept the next morning by an hour (yet miraculously still managed to arrive at the course only 5 minutes late - don't ask me how). I was also so tired that I cancelled several evening social engagements I should have showed my face at. Just how do ordinary people manage all these things? I have clearly lost the knack and I'm wondering just how I will cope with 3 months of this when a mere week was evidently such a struggle.

I have a month's respite now, a month in which I have 2 books to edit for clients, plus do my other regular freelance gigs and somehow psyche myself up for returning to the external workplace for 3 months. Scared? You bet. Cocky? Damn right. Somehow I just know I'll pull it out of the bag even though it will more than likely be through my usual combination of winging it, bluffing it and shitting it.

What I really want to know is where it will lead afterwards. But that's another story. So stay tuned...

Radio silence. Radio noise?

Apologies yet again for a neglected blog. The last few weeks have been busy, chaotic and strange.

I sense a slight whiff of change in the freelance wind. After a desperately quiet summer, things picked up in the early autumn. It's not just me. Colleagues have also reported an uptick on the work front and there do seem to be more jobs being advertised after a lengthy period of falling axes.

In the midst of all this, I've attended several industry conferences - even teaching some social media stuff at one. And I also decided to apply for some proper training.

It's been a long time since I did training. There was the 2 1/2 years indentures when I started at the tender age of 16 and 3/4. It was supposed to be 3 years, but my bosses had the temerity to go bust and I spent the 6 months I should have enjoyed finishing my qualifications taking my kit off at the local art college instead to pay the bills and stave off starvation.

There have been a few spells of CPD since then, almost entirely 1-day courses with the exception of a couple that were 2 days.

So it was with some trepidation that I applied, almost on a whim, just a week ago for a 3-month placement. Yes - 12 whole weeks. I don't think I ever took the application seriously - I didn't really think the training on offer was for members of the Venerable Order of Knackered Old Hacks, but for the thrusting, bright young things snapping at my heels, which are very definitely not Louboutins.

Thus, it was a slight shock to be invited for interview. I was given 4 days' notice and asked to prepare a presentation on social media platforms for news. To show you just how seriously I took this challenge, I did nothing until 2 hours before the deadline to submit it. Then I flung it all together and emailed it with literally 1 minute to spare. (Not forgetting the computer crash I had at 30 minutes to go, with a struggle to reboot.) I wrote the notes to go with the slides while on the 40-minute train journey to the interview today.

Nothing like looming deadlines, eh?

On arrival, I was thrown straight into delivering my presentation - unrehearsed, naturally - and somehow managed not to swear, have a seizure or otherwise cock things up. But still I departed thinking, That'll teach me...

So I was delighted at 10.30pm tonight to get an email offering me a placement. I can't quite believe it. I shed a little tear, swore a lot, went totally nuts for 10 minutes and then reality kicked in.

From January to end March, I'll be doing paid upskilling training in a newsroom. Ignoring the fact that I've almost no proper newsroom experience, despite the 3 decades in the job, it's just hit me that my life is about to change completely.

No more loafing around in my dressing gown all day. I'm convinced my postie believes I'm an invalid, given the number of times I've answered the door in my pyjamas. It's been almost 6 years since I last actually "went out" to work. Almost 6 years since I last set the alarm clock for a pre-dawn commute to an office. I've forgotten what it's like, forgotten how to be on my best behaviour. Freelancing definitely deskills you in some respects, like how to get dressed at a sensible hour and how to maintain a wardrobe of suits. How to cope with colleagues for 8 or 9 hours a day. Perhaps this is what the training is for - to teach me how to handle a workplace again.

I jest, of course. I'm really looking forward to January and the opportunities that lie ahead, even while I'm wondering how I'll adjust to such a massive, if temporary life change.

I'm also wondering where I'll be placed. A newsroom for sure - I want that experience, after 31 years of feature writing. But there's a good chance it'll be at a radio station. So if you hear someone reading a bulletin oop north in giveaway soft southern jessie tones, there's a fair chance it'll be me...

Media clones

I was reading investigative journalist Nick Davies' blog last night - he was musing about Keith Waterhouse, who died a couple of days ago. Waterhouse was a legend and a true old-style Fleet Street hack, as well as a fabulous writer.

Anyway, Davies reckons no one would offer Waterhouse a job today if he was fresh out of school.

"The sad death of the legendary Keith Waterhouse, has rightfully, attracted many plaudits in national newspapers. Reflections on his life....left school with no qualifications.....fond of the odd tipple or three.....a true original...etc. etc. Yet is it not ironical, that if a similar young Keith Waterhouse presented himself to a newspaper today, he'd very quickly be shown the door. No qualifications?...most newspapers today desire only graduate clones in grey suits, keep your heads down and don't rock the boat if you want to survive"

I'd be in the same boat. I left school at 16, the day I sat my last O. I was a scruffy, mouthy punk and I dyed my hair grass-green the next morning, which prompted my eviction from the family abode. Nevertheless, within a week I had somewhere to live (after borrowing a friend's sofa for a few days) and a job - I walked off the street and into the offices of a weekly magazine and walked out an hour later as their newest music critic.

Two local papers had already rejected me because of the green hair, the black eye make-up and my unique dress sense. I didn't mind too much as I didn't really want to be a reporter anyway, I wanted to write about music and that probably wasn't going to happen on a mainstream daily. But, infuriatingly, neither paper had looked at my writing to see if I had any talent. The mag that took me on looked beyond my appearance and asked to see my work - at that stage, a handful of ranty columns and reviews in a punk fanzine. I think they were also impressed with my enormous chutzpah (but probably not the equally big ego I was schlepping around with me back then).

A lot of really great hacks who were or are my contemporaries (and who have been infinitely more successful and famous than I) would also not have got a job in today's corporate climate. Julie Burchill and Steven Wells are two that spring immediately to mind. I somehow can't picture either of them doing a journalism degree followed by weeks of unpaid work experience in the hope it might lead to a job.

The industry is going through massive upheavals right now as it struggles to reposition itself in a digital world with new business models. It would be sad if, as part of that process, the hirers continue to look only for Davies' "graduate clones".