The beginning

I put some possessions in a handkerchief, tied it to a stick and moved to Copenhagen. My initial plan was to get a job but it soon became apparent that without knowing the language, that was going to be far from easy. I lay on my couch for a few weeks and told myself that reading the Danish subtitles on TV was an effective way of learning the language. Then I was offered some freelance work back in the UK which was too good an opportunity to turn down so for the past couple of months I have been commuting. One week here, one week there. It's kind of exciting. When you're walking through airports, instead of stumbling around like a wide-eyed pensioner from Lincolnshire, you almost feel like you belong. You pick up a few little shortcuts which leave you feeling particularly smug. I just found out you can check in at any easyJet counter and not only the one marked with your flight. Very handy. You remember to keep your boarding card in your hand for the flight attendant to check and then you huff when the person in front of you holds everything up by rooting around in their pockets for theirs. Sometimes I get a bit carried away though. You walk past a hip-looking guy chatting away on his mobile, a tan leather Mandarina Duck hold-all slung over his shoulder, hair effortlessly messy, CP Company clothes artfully crumpled and you suddenly feel particularly inadequate. I take my phone out of my pocket. Stare at it and will somebody to ring me. The paper I work for needing to check my availability; or an old friend suggesting coffee; anyone. Please?! (But none of my friends 'do' coffee and since I changed to Pay As You Go, I do all of my communicating via text.) There is definitely a stereotype here. Wallpaper-reading late-twenties and early-thirty-somethings jetting around Europe and the US. They have design agencies, they're booking agents, they manage bands, they run PR consultancies, they're something in fashion. They're something somewhere. But most of them are in airports hogging the Wireless areas. They're probably too cool for iPods. This could not continue indefinitely, I realised. My girfriend's father suggested I start my own company a month or so ago. I laughed. And then the word Hone came into my head. I liked it and it summed up what I do (I'm a newspaper sub-editor). We chatted and the bare bones of a business were fleshed out. I would offer a service to Danish companies using English text on websites, publicity material etc. I would take text translated from the Danish (usually badly)and sharpen it - make it more readable and fluent. I would correct spelling and punctuation and, if necessary, rewrite where appropriate. So that was that. Now I just need some clients.