Business Genius

Last post

2006-06-29T15:01:00.000+02:00

But fear not, I am not giving up. I am merely moving.

Given that I am clearly not a Business Genius but I don't know how to change the URL of this place, I've decided to set up camp somewhere else.

Come and visit me at Something rotten.

Go on, you know you want to.

Small success

2006-06-29T12:05:00.000+02:00

I have had an article published in the Copenhagen Post. I've been badgering them for the past five months but they wouldn't give me a job because I don't know Danish. Eventually though my perseverence paid off and they asked me to do a street guide for them. They liked it a lot and said they'd definitely be using me again. Which is nice. The paper is a well-designed weekly aimed at Copenhagen's expat community. I check it every week for the job ads but their arts guide is excellent too. Anyway, that's that. Oh, I got paid for it too. Only a measly £25 but it's a start.

I'm off to Silkeborg tomorrow (it's Friday tomorrow right?!) for the weekend. It's Anne's nephew's 1st birthday. Silkeborg is an ace place. It's a small town (Harpenden sized) but it has an amazing cinema, a huge theatre, lots of nice shops and a beautiful lake where the rich burghers go sailing. One of the most notable things about Denmark is the space. Jutland (the main island) can feel eerily deserted at times. Here in Copenhagen, everyone lives in seven-story Parisian style apartment blocks but out in Jutland there is no such thing as semi-detached. The motorways are largely empty. Children play out in the wilderness. It's odd coming from the UK and seeing things like that. We really are a crowded island and it's not sustainable.

Casual labour

2006-06-20T00:03:00.000+02:00

I'll spare you the details of my shitty day at work. Just one more to go and then I'm heading back to Denmark on Wednesday. Not sure what the next few weeks hold really. Every time one stint ends at the Mail I get scared that they won't ask me back. I imagine the conversation - Me: 'So, I'm available again next week.' Them: 'I think we'll leave it now. Thanks for all you've done.' It's strange how much that job affects my self-esteem. There is literally no feedback. The only way you have of assessing your effectiveness and skill is to look in the paper the next day and see how much the chief subs have altered your work. If one of my headlines makes it into print, it's like all my Christmases have come at once. The worst days are (like today) when I sit there for hours on end while all around me are given stories to work on and I am just bypassed. I had one story today. One poxy story in six hours. I'm not complaining, I'm still getting paid. But I'd rather be busy. I'm not going to improve my editing by working on one story a day. Fuck it. I hate that I get so sucked in by it all. I want to remain aloof and impervious to these imagined slights but it's difficult. Work is how us most of us humans gauge our worth. Currently, my only output is an average of eight or nine days a month and even those are only six hour days. As a casual, I am little higher up the food chain than dog shit. I am barely tolerated. An occasionally useful resource. My girlfriend is always trying to pin me down on what I see as my dream job. We have lots of chats about what I can do in Denmark and quite often she tells me about utterly dismal-sounding jobs. The most recent one was a PR officer for a company which specialises in freeze-drying things. 'But I will kill myself doing that,' I say. 'So what do you want to do?' she responds. 'Something with words!' I shout. 'Yes, this is working with words. You have to think about what it is you want Aaron, and maybe not be so snobby about what you do!' Of course, she's right. They always are. So, maybe it's time to bite the bullet. Take something I can do but which might not be the most intellectually stimulating employment. Start learning the language, give it all I've got. I dunno, all of this will fall into place one of these days. I guess.

Just quickly . . .

2006-06-18T14:06:00.000+02:00

I've not got long to post as I'm heading into work very shortly. I realise this blog has lacked direction in recent weeks. And in that sense it mirrors my own confusion. No doubt most of you are bored of the ins and outs of my ongoing personal crises but it really is all I have to offer! I've decided to lower my sights when I get back to Denmark and just try and get work of any kind. I feel completely disconnected back here in the UK. Just lost. The net effect is that I am not making any progress in any aspect of my life. Yes, the experience I am building up at the Daily Mail is valuable but what I really want is a regular life in Denmark. To make some friends and put down roots. All this to and froing was kind of exciting but it was just another way of avoiding any kind of commitment I guess. I'm fed up. I miss my girlfriend a stupid amount. God, I'm a miserable git!

Mentalist part two

2006-06-15T15:07:00.000+02:00

Here's another example of my recent compulsive thinking. Because I get the train into work I've developed a habit of imagining fairly horrifc train crashes as I stand at the platform. When the high-speed Midland Mainline train zooms through St Albans station, in my mind's eye I can see it jumping the tracks and ploughing towards me on its side at unimaginable speeds. To entertain myself I try and think how exactly I could avoid such an unpleasant death. My first thought is to take shelter behind the bridge supports but I'm not sure they'd be strong enough. Next I think it might be best to actually leap down onto the tracks in front of me in the hope that the train would pass over me and career on down into the station building. This has its own risk though, namely avoiding the London train coming from the other direction. Phew. What a minefield! I'm not sure there's a foolproof method of avoiding death here. I think the best thing is just to pray you're not in the way!

Mentalist

2006-06-13T23:18:00.000+02:00

I am getting more and more worried that I have some kind of compulsive disorder. I have taken to imagining increasingly unrealistic scenarios which might save me from penury. This morning as I took my friend's dog out for a walk, my mind started wandering. I thought how it would be rather cool if I happened upon a gang of muggers in the process of relieving Richard Branson of a few bob. I launch in - accompanied by the dog - and smash the muggers' faces in before solemnly returning Branson's valuables to him. Obviously grateful, the entrepreneur asks how he can repay the favour. A million quid should do it, I tell him. Is this normal behaviour? I'm not sure.

A moan

2006-06-09T09:53:00.000+02:00

Self-doubt. It can be crippling. Unfortunately I am perennially wracked with it. I am happier than I have been for a long time but this irregular life has it's own problems. Lack of financial security being numero uno. I'm on pretty good money at the Mail but it's on a casual basis - maybe 10 or 12 shifts a month. Not quite enough to make ends meet. Plus there's that vague, Protestant guilt at not working all the hours under the sun. I should have a regular job, I tell myself, and not fart-arse around swanning from Denmark to here hoping that something I'm actually interested in doing will turn up. Media jobs for non-Danish speakers in Copenhagen come around as often as Halley's Comet. But something will turn up, or so I tell myself anyway. And then there's the ambiguous feeling I get from being home. Both reassuring and anxiety-inducing. I am trying to shape my room, reclaim it fom its previous incarnations as, variously, my sister's room, my old room, parents' dressing room and then store room. But I don't want to feel too at home there. I left the UK to grow and develop as a person. Coming home sometimes reminds me that I have a long way to go.

New media ramblings

2006-06-07T12:01:00.000+02:00

Wow, a whole week and no posts. Maybe I'm disheartened by the fact that I don't appear to HAVE ANY READERS?!? HELLO?! I know, I can hear you, 'write something worthwhile and we'll comment!' Fair enough. I'll try. I read the other day on Media Guardian that the Daily Mail has incorporated its online team within the general newsroom. I laughed because when I was last there I asked some colleagues on the subs' desk who all the new people squeezed in inbetween the foreign and specialists' desks were and no-one had the foggiest idea. The article mentioned that Paul Dacre (Daily Mail editor) was now taking a special interest in new media and was looking at ways of creating more of a synergy between the online and regular news operations. I've thought about this a lot and have yet to come up with any ways in which a daily paper can offer any kind of worthwhile online service without damaging its primary product, the paper. News is instant now. Or so we hear. Since the advent of rolling news channels, people now expect information on demand. But a paper will not put tomorrow's splash on the web the night before because that would wreck sales. The Guardian is different though and is streets ahead of the competition. Its comment is free section has re-invigorated its online service giving people a platform for their own views and opinions. It has dedicted bloggers and opinion formers working solely on the net. In short, it has unique content. When I worked on The Sun Online as a staff writer we were always told what stories to upload. We'd all be scanning the wire services for juicy stories and waiting for the word to do a re-write and then post it. I remember on one occasion there was a heart-rending story about how a bomb had killed a family in Iraq or something equally horrific but just below it was a story about how Brian from Westlife had lost his wedding ring while surfing in Australia. No prizes for guessing whcih one we used. The stories that were chosen usually came out of the morning conference between senior staff. Some stories that came off the wires were used ahead of publication but nothing major. All of which made me question what a paper's online service was for. This is a grey area. The online service could, theoretically, make its master redundant within the space of a generation. Pretty soon everyone will have broadband, soon after that everyone will have wireless, then everyone will probably have remote access instantly (pdas). Will people still buy papers then? But until then a paper's website needs to think of something original to offer. Even if a few columnists were only available online it would give readers a reason to log on. There has to be uniqueness, not just repetition between online and paper. An old colleague at The Sun told me that Rupert Mudoch has hiked up the online budget. He knows what's coming and is trying to stay ahead of the game. The Sun Online is a technical marvel now compared to when I was there but ultimately it's still The Sun, online. In my opinion, online teams need greater resourcing and a clearer vision. For most papers it's just a case of staffing it with a few tech-heads and trainee writers and then best forgotten about. But if papers want to shape the new media revolution as opposed to being shaped by it, they need to start paying more attention to their own sites. Sayeth the Lord.

Birds and worms

2006-05-31T00:39:00.000+02:00

The theme from Twin Peaks, the opening music for the BBC documentary series Arena and now this beautiful video from Sol Seppy. What do these pieces of music have in common? Nothing except they all elicit the same emotional reaction from me; an inchoate longing for something barely tangible - to feel the way I did when I was 11 or 12. Not just feel it but be there again and experience that bewilderment and innocent ardour anew. When I watch this video I imagine myself standing in a field under a warm sun, alone except for the birds and the worms, my thoughts blurring, wanting to see her, needing to be near her, wondering why I felt this way, not knowing what any of this means.

Everybody Loves Monty

2006-05-29T20:33:00.000+02:00

You've got to love Monty. Well, I do. Most of you probably haven't even got the foggiest who he is. He's England's new premier spin bowler. That's cricket. Anyway, he's rapidly becoming a cult figure for his somewhat haphazard fielding (he couldn't catch an STD off a Russian whore). It really is a comic delight to see him in the field. Given that most cricket spectators are the type of people who were uniformly bullied throughout their education, it's easy to see why so many are rooting for Monty. He represents the underdog made good. The slightly incompetent buffoon who's made his way to the top despite an all too glaring deficiency. But in his case, his bowling goes a long way to compensating for his erratic approach to stopping the ball (allowing it to roll through his legs before kicking it into the boundary boards). But will that be enough to cement his place in the team? There are already rumblings that England's extremely pragmatic coach, Duncan Fletcher, might be looking at more prosaic options (a euphemism for people who aren't half the bowler Monty is but can chip in with a few runs at the tail-end of the innings. And catch). I for one hope he resists that temptation. Monty is reportedly working very hard at his catching and deserves his place in the team for entertainment value alone. Long live Monty.

I can tell there's something going on

2006-05-28T22:50:00.000+02:00

Discovering new things. That's what I set out to do over here and so far I've been successful. I've discovered plenty about myself, about Copenhagen, about the key to good public transport (bikes, lots of bikes) and, most importantly, thanks to Anne's tutelage, the secret of successful washing up. I've learnt lots of handy little tips recently which have really helped me raise the bar. I barely even dirty the water now. The key is pre-rinsing. Anyway, where was I? Discovery. I've rambled about the net often enough on here but it's something else isn't it? Someone has just said to me they think we'll all be living on the net soon enough. By which I think they meant something similar to what J.G Ballard did in a short story he wrote years ago (I forget the name) where people forget how to interact in reality as all relationships are conducted online. Someone (in what must have been the inspiration for The Matrix) breaks free of the net and makes contact with their family but with horrifying results. Lovely! Well here's something else I've just discovered on the net; a Swedish 'electro-pop' trio called Peter, Bjorn and John. Check out Young Folks at their MySpace page. Try and get past the 'Rainbow' name. They're cool. I swear. I'm in a generous mood so I'm also going to give you this little gem by Soltero, called From the Station. Enjoy! One last note, check out Captain Picard's Journal which I've added to my links on the right. As far as I can tell it's mostly just little pieces which keeps the spirit of The Next Generation well and truly alive but then he chucks in one which makes you suspect he's filtering his own life through the prism of the Star Trek Universe. There's one post where he begins: 'A crucial piece of engineering has broken down here on the Enterprise . . . the washing machine.' Genius!

Waterworks

2006-05-28T00:29:00.000+02:00

I was watching TV yesterday (a fairly regular occurence in the life of Business Genius) and I switched it on to TV2 Zulu which is some kind of youth oriented channel over here. Anyway, it was about half past nine, I was digesting a slice of pizza and enjoying a bottle of Tuborg when I was suddenly greeted by the sight of a Japanese woman pissing into some chap's mouth. Now my Danish is a bit sketchy but I think they'd been locked in some kind of dungeon without any water and she was demonstrating survival techniques. Baffling.

The Walkmen

2006-05-25T23:06:00.000+02:00

The Walkmen have a new album out you might like to know. Here's a funny story about them. A few years ago when they released Bows and Arrows I bought tickets to see them at the Garage in Highbury. I would have gone with my girlfriend but we split up shortly before. I managed to convince a friend to come with me though. However, such was my emotional frailty that I found the whole thing a bit too difficult. Going into London just reminded me of my girlfriend as she had since moved to Kentish Town and about five minutes after getting to the venue I started to feel sick. One minute after that I was outside throwing up my M&S spaghetti bolognese ready meal. Soon after my friend arrived. He was already several pints into his own evening's entertainment but I didn't want to drink. I felt hopelessly lost and alone. Then the band came on and I felt as if at last someone knew what I was thinking. As Hamilton Leithauser (great name) belted out The Rat I knew a kindred spirit was in the room. So I like The Walkmen. Go and buy the album A Hundred Miles Off. Even if Pitchfork have slammed it.

What would Leonardo have said?

2006-05-24T23:19:00.000+02:00

Landed back in Copenhagen today and immediately took up where I left off - the couch. A man needs his rest after all. The four six-hour shifts I've worked this past week have really taken their toll so I'm having at least two weeks off before heading back to the UK. Anyway, I've been thinking about this film of the Da Vinci Code recently. Despite an absolute panning in the press the film has taken four hundred billion pounds or thereabouts in its opening weekend. Mark Lawson said it was the latest example of the 'critic-proof product'. I say it's further proof of mankind's headlong descent into cretinism. I came to this conclusion after reading that one of the principal characters in the book is a 'self-flagellating albino monk'. I have not read Dan Brown's opus as long ago I vowed I would never dirty my brain with any books which 1/ sell more than 2,800 copies and 2/ have the soubriquet 'publishing phenomenon' printed on the cover. For some reason these words conjure up images of a bespectacled bookbinder, his hands moving at speeds not seen since Data out of Star Trek: The Next Generation attempted to save the life of his android progeny by soldering her neural pathways quicker than they were being eroded by a 'system-wide failure'. Sadly for Data, or Mr Data as Captain Picard called him, he failed. Anyway. A 'self-flagellating albino monk'. Good God. Clearly this is the work of a man who spent his formative years locked in a room where the only books were the Hardy Boys' Detective Handbook and The Collected Ian Fleming (with annotated guide to overdone baddies). Oh and of course that one by those acid-damaged pseudo historians about the 'real-life' search for the Holy Grail. You know, the one Dan Brown copied. Incidentally I tried to read that when I was 17 but gave it up because I HAD A LIFE. So what do we conclude from all of this? Obviously, good things happen to weirdos with bad haircuts and worse prose and Captain Picard was the best Star Trek captain though Deep Space Nine was easily the best series. FACT.

Bad news

2006-05-23T11:58:00.000+02:00

Well, the wait is over. Unfortunately it wasn't a happy ending and I didn't get the job. They decided to give it to someone with fluent Danish. Apparently it was a 'tough decision blah blah'. I'm actually relieved to just put it behind me now. There's going to be other opportunities. While I'm on, let me just give a quick thanks to all of you who have posted comments on here since I started. It's really rewarding to know that I have a few regular readers. Anyway, it's nearly time for another stint of hysteria-inducing headline writing at the Daily Mail and I have a shirt to iron and a chin to shave.

Selling power tools

2006-05-21T18:11:00.000+02:00

Sundays. They should be banned. Today, a drab, grey blanket has replaced the sky. Rain has been falling almost incessantly. A long time ago I worked on Sunday mornings for one of my friend's fathers. He sold power tools. He would pick me up at the crack of dawn and we'd drive to a car boot sale somewhere, set up the stall and then wait for the customers to arrive. It was a highly depressing experience. My most prominent memory of those mornings is of how I'd try and cheer myself up by counting down the minutes until we packed up and I could go round to my girlfriend's. For reasons which aren't completely clear to me, being at my girlfriend's house represented the polar opposite of the melancholy of those mornings. Perhaps I am just a work-shy idler - in fact I know I am - but there was more to it than that. I have always been guilty of idealising people and certain situations but there was genuine solace to be had at her house. Our relationship was turbulent to say the least but I loved her as much as a 15-year-old boy could and I was in thrall of the warmth and peace that I only seemed able to find at her house.
One car boot sale in particular would distress me. It was in a multi-story car park in a town called Hoddesdon and we would go there in the winter when the outdoor sales packed up. The brutalist architecture combined with the peculiar desperation only exhibited at British car boot sales was enough to drive me to the edge of despair. At times my boss would wander off to have a browse at some of the other stalls and I would be left to hold the fort. Grizzled workmen would approach and ask me how much this drill bit was or whether I had any angle grinder mats. My stock response was to stare back wide-eyed and open-mouthed until said workman walked away, realising they were clearly dealing with an imbecile. God knows how much I cost my employer. Added to that I was frequently too hungover to even wake up on time and he would be forced to wait as I dragged myself out of bed, a mounting sense of dread rising up in me like the times my maths teacher started handing back assignments. The sheer misery of those mornings is hard to convey. Maybe there was a lesson to be learned though. You have to take the good with the bad or something equally platitudinous. I heard later that my old boss set up a shop and began importing serious amounts of tools. Apparently he sold the company a few years ago for the best part of a million quid. As for my girlfriend, we are still friends and from time to time I go round to her house where we drink tea and reminisce about being 15. I spy a gap in the grey, I think it's time I ventured out of the house for a while.

My friend

2006-05-19T12:48:00.000+02:00

I had a friend once. He was more than just an acquaintance or a mate you chat to in the pub, we had a genuine connection. We bonded over books. We worked together at a clothes shop, an occupation which left plenty of free time for poring over literature. We discovered authors like John Fante, Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan, Nelson Algren and Knut Hamsun together. On the day a second-hand bookstall opened in one of our town's antique centres, it was he who had the early lunchbreak and he hurried down there to check out the stock. I was disappointed because I knew he would cherry-pick the best stuff. He returned laden with books and was glowing with excitement as he had found the ultimate book-seller - someone with exactly the same taste as us. My lunch came and I ventured down there, returning with several books. But I could have bought dozens. The guy's surname was Parrot and asking whether we had 'been down to Parrot's lately' became a fixture in our conversation. By now we were getting even more leftfield. We'd gone through a Celine phase, discovered the Calder imprint, turned left at Marguerite Duras and gone round the Blaise Cendrars roundabout. But then we diverged. He went esoteric for a while with Madame Blavatsky and G.I Gurdjieff and I stayed Stateside with Raymond Carver, Carlos Williams, Dos Passos and William Bronk - a little-known poet whose book I found stumbling round a bookshop somewhere in Bloomsbury, half pissed. The chronology of events is a little hazy. He had moved in with a woman we both worked with and had a daughter. They had a lovely house. My girlfriend and I visited occasionally. They were older than us but we were good friends. I went round as often as I could on my trips home from university and we always found time to chat about books. My friend had another passion in his life - underground soul and disco music. He made me several tapes, most of which I have since mislaid, and it was a always a privilege to hear him talk about that side of his life. He and a friend started out on a buiness venture which took them to America in search of vast stockpiles of records. They were beginning to make money too but my friend had quite a fractious personality and I think they went their seperate ways after just a few record-buying trips. So volatile was he that he once threw a remote control at my head when I teased him about some trivial matter. It embedded in the wall about a millimetre away from my head. But I wasn't unduly worried. We had often talked about the extremes of personality; we tried to distance ourselves from the petty concerns of others. We were literate and almost intellectual, so we believed. Blind rage was acceptable to us, a symptom as it was of a world which sought to stultify its inhabitants and shield them from too brazen a reckoning with reality. Such connections are rare. His relationship broke down and soon after he moved out of the house. We continued to be friends for a time but our meetings were increasingly irregular. He left the clothes shop and went to work at the Early Learning Centre. He was made manager. And then he was relocated to Wood Green and our meetings ceased almost entirely. I learned some unpleasant facts about the relationship from his former partner. Things between us were not the same. It's hard to pinpoint when we last spoke. Our mobile numbers changed, a connection was briefly re-established but then it too was severed and I have no idea where he is or what he is doing. I'm not sure why I am thinking of him today. Maybe it's being back home. The old sadness fnds its way to the surface a little easier. We railed together against conformity but the price he paid for his individualism was a high one. I suppose I am afraid of paying a similar toll.

Update

2006-05-16T10:37:00.000+02:00

Plan B?
I was waiting to hear about this job before posting again but, surprise surprise, I still don't know. I mailed the company on Thursday to explain I had mobile phone problems and that if they came to a decision then or on Friday they should SMS me. I had a mail back to say they still hadn't decided and that I should bear with them for a 'few more working days'. In the meantime I've been watching a lot of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter and I've decided that if it all goes tits up here I'm off to Florida to enlist in their Alligator Elimination Corps.

Cool French band alert

2006-05-10T21:05:00.000+02:00

I found the coolest website I've seen in a long time yesterday. It belongs to French band Domotic and it's ace. Go and have a play. Their songs aren't bad either. Still no word on this job. They mailed me last week to say they would definitely let me know this week. I'm starting to feel like a protagonist in a Samuel Beckett play (an Estragonist, maybe?!). Still, what will be will be.

Charlie and me

2006-05-08T22:57:00.000+02:00

A lazy day today; sunbathing in the Assistens Kirkegard (cemetery) over the road, dinner at the deli round the corner. Copenhagen is sweltering. It must sound odd, sunbathing in a cemetery, but it's a popular spot for housewives and the unemployed. I lay and read my book, Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow, and tried to burn off the top layer of skin on my face. I'm 27 and I still get spots. Anne thinks I have a virus, my mum thinks I eat too much cheese. I think omniscient women make me suppurate. At any rate there is something a little peculiar about graveyard sun-worshipping. The thought of thousands of human bodies interred six feet below you is not eerie as such, just a little disconcerting. One's thoughts turn naturally to mortality. Coincidentally, death anxieties are currently making things difficult for Charlie Citrine, the protagonist of Humboldt's Gift. His belief is that our earthly lives are just one phase of existence, preceding our souls' escape into some other plane of being. I am not so sure. But this is not the time for my amateur theology. In other news, I have been asked to become involved in a project a friend of mine is starting around the theme of social sustainability. She envisages a website with occasional printed editions featuring quirky, affirming stories with a credo which revolves around successful social experimentation, creative communication, ecological tools, positive integration. She wants to create something stylish and unique and I would like more than anything to be involved. At first I could not get a handle on what her niche was but we have fleshed a few things out and I think she's onto something. Stay tuned for updates.

Curled up in the backseat...

2006-05-06T21:52:00.000+02:00

Happy Hearts is another song I found at Said the Gramophone. This is a collaboration between Okkervil River and Daniel Johnston. It's lovely. A hymn to impermanence and a beautiful fusion of straight-up American angst and indie whimsy. Scroll down the post to find it.

Untitled

2006-05-05T21:28:00.000+02:00

I'm back in Copenhagen. It was quite an uneventful journey home. I felt a peculiar sense of detachment while I was waiting in the departure lounge at Stansted and started jotting some things down in my notebook. It's amusing the sort of reaction you get once you affect a writerly posture. Sat there, pen in hand, gazing around at the tourists, occasionally noting down my impressions, I mistook myself for a genuine flaneur and not the pretentious tool I actually am! Some glance at you worriedly, perhaps suspecting that you're writing about their heavy bellies. Others ignore you with professional disdain but most pass by oblivious....tbc.

Double take

2006-05-04T00:12:00.000+02:00

I saw him again today, the flute player I mean. He got on the tube just before my stop so I didn't get to see his whole routine this time. I did a double-take when I saw him; it feels like we are somehow connected now. I am intrigued by him (as you can probably tell). London is pretty well-stocked with oddballs but there is something about his mournful expression which moves me. I thought about him as I walked along Kensington High Street, negotiating a path through all the beautiful people. I pictured him gently blowing into his flute, the vast majority of his fellow passengers feigning deafness, moving from carriage to carriage, tube to tube. I'd like to think that he's a former virtuoso, not quite recovered from a breakdown and unable to refrain from succumbing to his peculiar compulsion of playing on the tube. But that's just the florid imagination of someone who's read too many 19th century French novels. Whatever the truth, he has provided me with more stimulation than anything else these past few days.

The flute player

2006-05-02T23:53:00.000+02:00

A flautist got on my tube this evening and began playing. He was quite good. He did a medley of rather sad little tunes and then hurriedly pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and walked quickly up and down the carriage with it held out in front of him. He didn't seem to want to ask for money though. It was just a perfunctory gesture. No-one put any money in the bag and he went and stood by the door staring out into the dark of the tunnel. It was a strange interlude. As he played one got that odd sense of something piercing the all-pervasive veil of ordinariness; a defiance of the tacit agreement that in confined public spaces, no effort should be made to fill the void between people - metaphysically I mean. Such incidents jar. They are uncomfortable, not just because they force people to examine their consciences. 'Should I give him some money? No, I didn't ask him to come in here and play.' They are also uncomfortable because one inevitably ends up considering the nature of the musician's situation. What pecuniary straits must he be in to come and busk in this way? Most people instinctively and sanctimoniously rejected what they saw as an imposition and pretended he was not there, that he did not exist. Eventually our indifference told and when we stopped he got out and I lost him in the crowd of bodies streaming away, their faces blurring as we picked up speed, indistinguishable from one another. Then blackness and a return to the void. The lights flicker and briefly dim, we are approaching the next station.

Shit

2006-04-30T23:48:00.000+02:00

Things are on a knife-edge. I should hear this week about the job in Copenhagen but the longer I go without knowing the less confident I get. In the meantime things are going from bad to worse here. I spent the whole day at the Mail today and got to work on one shitty story which did not make the paper anyway. I feel like a complete outsider there. My boss was not in today and my name was not even on the rota. I am not down for any other days either! I'll ring him tomorrow and see what the situation is. Maybe I can get a few more days out of them before heading back to Copenhagen on Friday. I feel uneasy. If I don't get this job there are not many more options I feel. But I really don't want to come home. The daily schlep in and out of London is soul-destroying. And then I get to sit in silence for six hours, occasionally exchanging the odd forced pleasantry with the full-timers but generally being ignored. What does the future hold? Tune in tomorrow for another episode in the not so scintillating life of BUSINESS GENIUUUUUUUUSSSSS.

Friday night's alright

2006-04-28T19:10:00.000+02:00

Shout Out Louds
Right, I'm off out to see this lot. My first gig in Denmark, can't wait. The weather's been lovely today; Anne and I sat outside the little cafe in our street and had lunch. No word yet on the job. I really want it though. Been feeling quite stressed about the whole situation. While it's been fun to be in this limbo and jetting back and forth for a while, basically I want to start feeling settled here and make some friends. Heading back home tomorrow for a week at the Mail. I hope it's my last.

A quick one

2006-04-26T22:20:00.000+02:00

Just before I go to bed, here's a link to Brendan Reed. I'd never heard of him but those chaps at Said The Gramophone have struck gold again methinks. Have a listen to this track anyway, it's called Gold July and it's either the sound of a nervous breakdown or a work of genius. Probably both. He used to be the drummer for Arcade Fire apparently and he has a website called Nocarsgo, which is also the name of an Arcade Fire song. A tribute to him maybe.

John Banville and W.G Sebald

2006-04-26T21:22:00.000+02:00

Tonight I went to a reading given by John Banville at Copenhagen Central Library. He spoke in a rather monotonous Irish lilt which bordered on the hypnotic. He read from his novel The Sea which won last year's Booker Prize. I'd heard of him but never read any of his novels. But I think I will now. The extract he read was lovely. It had that feeling of understated melancholy I like so much but technically it was shimmering. It takes quite a writer to infuse the quotidian with so much lyricism. Afterwards there were questions and I decided to ask what writers he admired and he settled on W.G Sebald (pictured above) as the author who'd impressed him the most in the past 20 years. I was dumbfounded as I'm reading Vertigo by the same author right now. Banville went on to describe Sebald's death several years ago in a car crash as a great loss to literature. Sebald, a German who settled in Manchester before becoming Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, has a peculiarly idiosyncratic style. He fuses personal and social exploration with travel writing and the result is more or less unique. Banville certainly thought so anyway. He said it was his belief that a 'new kind of fiction' is on the way and Sebald may well have been its precursor. Who knows. At any rate, I would certainly recommend his novels. I remember reading about his death - I think it was in 2001 - and feeling extremely sad. I'd not long read his book The Emigrants and I knew that the world had lost a special writer.

Copenhagen

2006-04-26T12:49:00.000+02:00

When I go back to the UK I often get asked what Copenhagen is like and I usually reply with a well-honed response about how clean, efficient and design-obsessive it is. I've only been here three months though and the bulk of that has been spent in Norrebro, an up and coming district a few minutes' bike ride out of the centre. I don't really know what makes this city tick and until I get a job (and hence some money) I still won't. Luckily for you though, this chap has summed it up perfectly. Have a read of this. He captures the zeitgeist perfectly in my opinion. The Danes can be comically blunt at times but you get used to it. Anyway, I'm off out to try and find the English bookshop I've been meaning to visit for the past three months. The picture above is of a street in Osterbro - a well-heeled district where Anne used to live.

Reassessment

2006-04-25T22:07:00.000+02:00

I can't seem to help myself can I?! Ever since I was 16 I fancied myself as a purveyor of deeply introspective literature and from re-reading yesterday's installment it would seem that not much has changed. A friend commented on here that perhaps I should concentrate on the now rather than worrying about the future. She's right of course but life would be a wondrous stroll along tree-lined, enchanted avenues if it was as easy as that.
I feel I need to make a few things happen; get my energy levels back up. I am meeting with a fashion designer who has a shop here in Jaegersborggade on Thursday and I'm going to try and sell an article about her to ID or something like that. I'm by no means a fashion expert but I think I know style when I see it. Anne and I have been in her shop a few times and both love what she does. Her clothes are quite simple, cotton or silk dresses, skirts, emblazoned with quite bold but definitely beautiful prints.
I've had some other feature ideas recently. As always with me, it's a question of effort and motivation. I have a habit of coasting through life rather like a slug coasts down a submerged yoghurt pot filled with beer. (Business Genius's first and only gardening tip). Anyway, I would like to do something on the rather intriguing housing system here in Copenhagen. Society Guardian or a housing trade journal back home might be interested. Given the feverish interest in anything property-related in the UK I think it could work. I also thought about doing a light-hearted piece on the travails I've had learning the lingo but I think I'll save that for here.
As for the random pic above, that's the window in the loo at Clarence Park, home of the mighty St Albans City FC. They've made it to the play-offs of the Conference South and are in with a good chance of promotion to the Conference proper. Well done lads.

Reconsidering

2006-04-24T23:36:00.000+02:00

I've been wondering what the point in this is. I desperately don't want to add another tedium-filled 'I did this and then I did that' blog to an already tedium-choked internet. I know that if I was 100 per cent committed to starting a successful business then my daily observations on my struggles, ups, downs etc would make for a genuinely worthwhile read. But as you can tell, events have intervened and if I get the job I have applied for I won't be pursuing the business idea. Not yet at any rate. All of which leads me to make one conclusion about business - it's not for the faint-hearted. I find it so daunting to think that the only thing staving off penury is getting my own company off the ground. Particularly in as competitive an industry as copy-editing. I thought my idea was nigh on revolutionary but the more I dug the more I found that Denmark is well-stocked with native English speakers offering their services to Danish firms needing a helping hand with their English texts. Which is not to say that there is not room for one more. I think I could do this, I'm just not sure I could do it in time to start putting food on the table. I need to work. And fast. The idea of my own company is a dream. In an ideal world I would be getting a steady trickle of income from my little copy-editing company, selling the occasional article back to some English publications, working on my novel and generally living free of the constraints of regular employment. But there's a reason why that's a dream for many and a reality for few. It's bloody difficult!
Getting back to my original point - if this blog is not to be the highs and lows of a would-be business genius, then what is it to be about? I don't know I'm afraid. I think part of the reason I'm here in Denmark in the first place is because I just don't know. I don't really know what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. I just knew I couldn't keep doing what I was doing before. I am just one voice among millions, spewing words out into cyberspace, hoping that someone somewhere might find something akin to their own experience in what I write. I guess that's why we write in the first place. To give form to what was formless. But the net is a new frontier and, just like any new expansion, some people are forging ahead and others are falling by the wayside. Yet more will just settle for their little patch of land, by the creek, next to the approaching railroad. It's safe there at any rate.
I don't know why I am doing this. But I am doing it anyway.

Relief

2006-04-21T22:13:00.000+02:00

It's good to be back. The dust has settled and I feel a bit calmer. I'm not sure why the past few days seemed so stressful but that's how I felt. My last day at work at the Mail was a nightmare (see below) and that coupled with the uncertainty of not knowing if I would get any more work there contributed to my feeling a bit down. As I outlined yesterday, my interview went pretty well. I hadn't mentioned it before mainly because I hadn't given it so much thought. I was so clued up about my business that I applied on the spur of the moment and forgot about it. Once I was in there though and the boss was outlining his plans and hopes for the future of the company I felt quite involved. I guess he is where I want to be five or ten years down the track. He has would-be investors beating a path to his door but he is staying independent, trying to build the company up the way he sees fit. I know that if I am offered a position there I will take it. The money is so-so, about £25k, but with a bonus scheme on top of that. While that may mean scaling back on my own enterprise I think I have to do it. They work almost exclusively in business communications and I think there is a lot I can learn about marketing etc. He was certainly a pretty passionate bloke and very interested to learn about me, my experiences, my approach to writing. When he asked what constituted good writing for me, I said 'being able to communicate ideas or messages clearly and simply but without sacrificing the shades of grey'. Or something along those lines. We talked about how tabloid journalism differs from quality and I explained that it takes more skill to work for The Sun than it does for The Guardian which he found interesting.
I was very honest from the outset and said I was actually hoping to start a company myself doing something quite similar. I told him how I'd approached some organisations already and gotten some feedback. It was difficult to guage his reaction to that but hopefully he will see it as a sign of initiative on my part. It turns out that we'd both approached Tivoli Gardens with a pitch for work. Surely that must put me in credit?! Maybe he's thinking to himself: 'We'd better get this guy on board? He's a maverick, he'll be taking our business before you can say Jack Robinson!' A more likely scenario though is he saw me out the door and thought: 'Crikey, what a brown-nose. Andrew Fucking Mehrtens.'
Incidentally, I do have more work at the Mail. Getting there was a bit of a palaver though. I rang up and spoke to the chief sub and briefly explained my position, i.e, living in Denmark etc. (Because he was off sick for so long he had no idea.) Anyway, he was extremely surprised that I'd been commuting and asked what my long-term plans were. I lied and said they I had none and I was happy to keep coming back as and when they needed me but as long as I was getting six shifts a time. He said that was good as it meant I wasn't forcing his hand. So we agreed I'd come back next week and do Weds, Thurs, Fri and then Sun, Mon, Tues. Then Anne came back and reminded me we had tickets for a concert on Friday. So I had to ring back and make up some bullshit about going to my mother-in-laws for the weekend. We both started getting increasingly flustered. Dates were getting bandied around. I said I'd come back next Saturday and start work on Sunday and I could do the whole week if they needed. He said 'OK darling.' I did not quite know what to say to that and I wasn't convinced he knew what Sunday I meant but hey ho. At any rate, I've booked my flight and I'll be turing up for work at 3pm next Sunday. Whether or not they're expecting me is a different kettle of fish.

Briefly . . .

2006-04-20T23:08:00.000+02:00

I had an interview at a copywriting agency today. It went pretty well. As with most things in Denmark, the office was super-stylish. You had to walk through a sleek, minimalist canteen they share with an ad agency to get there and I felt kind of pretentious just showing up. But it was all good fun. The chap who interviewed me was a Kiwi so I bored him with my 'New Zealand tale' which in a nutshell is how I lived over there when I was younger and went to school with Andrew Mehrtens (former All Black). I think it would be a cool place to work but the actual writing would be dull as dishwater. The bulk of their clients are Danish tech companies or banks, pharmaceuticals etc. We'll see.
Ordinarily it would be at this point that I would regale you with some deep insight into the interview process but it's late and I can't be bothered. Much more to come tomorrow I promise.

Frustration

2006-04-19T08:41:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was a very dispiriting day. In fact I doubt it would have have been more dispiriting if someone had sawn off my head with an emery board, filled my torso with angry bees and then fused my head back on with a bunsen burner. It's not that I was not given anything to do - I was actually given a few leads for once - but I couldn't do much with the stuff I was given. My headlines were feeble, my sentences were unwieldy; I didn't feel so much a sub-editor as just sub-standard. By the end of the day I felt very low on confidence and just wanted to go home. There was no time to discuss any future shifts with my boss either so as of now I am in limbo once more. But if I was him I wouldn't be in a hurry to ask me back.
To make matters worse I ended up staying half an hour later than usual so I could finish off a story which meant I missed my train. I jumped on the circle line and we ended up going nowhere because of a signal failure at Edgware Road. By now I was increasingly fed up and feeling strangely violent. I kept thinking some youths further down the carriage were going to mug me and I was almost willing them to attack me so I could fly into a psychotic rage and, through sheer animal fury, send them on their way to the next life. In the end I read my book. Anyway, thinking I was clever, I jumped off at Paddington and tried to change on to the Hammersmith line. Why did I do this? What was my logic? Not only is the Hammersmith line on the other side of Paddington's extremely large station but it just goes the same way as the circle line anyway, on the same track. I estimate I simply added another 20 minutes to my journey. I am going back to Denmark now and it's not a moment too soon.

Connections

2006-04-17T23:32:00.000+02:00

Today my grandad and I emailed the woman who is seeking info on her uncle killed in World War Two. She had a series of records detailing various facts of his war record but did not understand the abbreviations. So my grandad went through explaining them to me and I typed them into an email and we sent it off. It was very interesting to learn more about the day-to-day reality of life in Bomber Command. The woman's uncle had a slightly baffling career though and my grandad was puzzled by some of the gaps in his service record. At one stage he was admitted to hospital and following his discharge there was a five month period where no details are recorded. Presumably a medical convalescence. As we sat together I could glimpse my grandad's raid reports. As I mentioned yesterday, this woman contacted my grandad because her uncle served in the same squadron. In one of the reports my grandad's Lancaster is listed directly above the other chap's meaning they took off within minutes of each other. And yet they did not know one another from Adam. Both of them bound for Berlin - the most hazardous of destinations - to try and deliver their own little nail in the coffin of Nazi Germany. But only one would return.
It's strange the connections we make. Tentacles stretched out over time bringing together people who ordinarily would never have any reason to communicate. My grandad may never have exchanged a single word with his former comrade but now, in death, he becomes real for the first time. Alive. The chap he passed at breakfast or brushed shoulders with on the dash out to their bombers barely registered then but now he does. He has become more than a name on a letter or a gravestone. He is someone who shared the same experiences as my grandad. He can't come to know him but at least now he can acknowledge him.

Night Fighter

2006-04-17T00:42:00.000+02:00

My grandad had a letter the other day from a woman who is trying to find out more about her uncle who was killed in World War Two when his Lancaster collided with another over Germany. He was in the same (44) squadron as my grandad but they did not know one another. The woman's letter was interesting as she addressed my grandad with the letters DFM after his name - Distinguished Flying Medal. I am often reminded of his actions in the war by a picture that hangs in his kitchen. It is of him and his crew members outside the door of their Lancaster, smiling and joking after returning from a raid.
I love that picture. My grandad was 18 when it was taken. It is difficult to comprehend him flying heavy bombers over Germany at such a young age. But he did. Along with countless others, 99 percent of whom were younger than I am now. In fact I would have been an old man in Bomber Command. An old man at 27.
Anyway, my grandad did a little research for the woman. He has books detailing all of Bomber Command's losses during the war and I think he was able to fill in some blanks for her. She had found out that her uncle also flew some missions with a different crew, captained by a chap named Curatale but had not known what happened to them. My grandfather read her the sparse details from his book. 'Took off from RAF Oldham, such and such a date, shot down by night fighter. All crew buried in such and such cemetery.' And that was that. Eight young men shot out of the sky and gone forever. One particularly poignant detail was the fact that that mission was fairly unique for having eight men aboard. A normal crew was seven but pilots often accompanied experienced crews on a mission before piloting their own planes.
I wonder if he felt part of that crew. The bonds between the crews were especially tight. I hope he did not feel too much of an outsider. The picture above is not of my grandad's crew but it's remarkably similar in composition.

Our correspondent writes . . .

2006-04-15T19:37:00.000+02:00

It's one of those lovely, tranquil English spring evenings. Dusk is a few hours off, the birds are chattering and I am going to take advantage of it by heading out for a walk. Sorry for the delay, there hasn't been too much to report. I'm just counting down the days until I go back to Copenhagen. It's difficult maintaining a blog about starting a business in one country but spending a fortnight in a completely different country. I miss my girlfriend. I miss the view from my flat out onto the beautiful apartment buildings in Jaegersborggade.
On a brighter note, I ventured over to the foreign desk at the Mail yesterday and told them about my situation. I asked if I could ever be of any use and they said potentially yes. So I am now a Daily Mail Scandinavia correspondent. Well, kind of. I doubt there will be too many assignments - the Mail is not renowned for its international news coverage - but it is a good opportunity.
I have had some bad news from my best friend down in Australia. Or rather he has had some bad news which it wouldn't be fair to broadcast. But I would like to say how much I admire him for what he's done. He took the leap two years ago and went over to Oz with no job, one contact and nothing but self-belief. He's doing brilliantly out there and he helped me realise that life is there to be lived. He's had a few rough blows in recent weeks but he's bearing up, the kiddy-fiddling reprobate (I joke).
I realise that I've been coming on a bit heavy with the homespun philosophising recently. I'm sorry. There can't be many more annoying spectacles than a self-absorbed buffoon blithering on about life, the universe and nothing in particular.
So i'm going to try and tone it down. Cheers everyone.

Slow day

2006-04-13T00:04:00.000+02:00

Something I keep thinking about at the moment is mediocrity. Or settling. As in the Postal Service song The Sound of Settling although I don't actually know what that song is about. When do people accept their lot? When do we stop striving? I guess familiy, careers etc come along and you lose sight of that vague, nebulous idea you had of actual fulfilment. Maybe it lingers on for some, an unrealised hint of what might have been. Something half-seen and shapeless that whispers: 'Is this what I wanted? Is this how I imagined?' I have never stopped wondering. I am just too afraid to actually seek as hard as I should. It's only now I feel I have a little more self-confidence that I have embraced change and relished challenges. But always there's a side of me which walks past nice houses with cars on the drive and thinks: 'That will do me, a lovely wife, kids on the way, bit of money.' But then I fast forward 20 years and I see a sad-eyed man staring out the window at me pondering how it came to this. I guess what it comes down to is being sure. Sure that you gave it your all at least. Sorry this is so brief, it's been a long day.

Sowing the seeds (tenuous!)

2006-04-11T23:23:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I worked on two downpage stories, neither of which made it into the paper's final edition. It's disheartening to say the least. Today was a little bit different though. I got given a story about a policeman who swindled an old lady out of the best part of 300k. The story was initially a lead on page 35 and I had it cleaned up and in place by about 5pm. Come the six o'clock news and the beeb had made it their third story, giving it a good three or four minutes in-depth coverage. I looked over at the newsdesk and it was fascinating to see the reaction. I don't think they had anticipated the beeb giving it so much attention. The story was subsequently bumped up to page seven and given a lot more room. I spent another hour or so on it and the final version is more or less mine. We'll wait and see if it stays page seven for the final edition; I expect it will drop back down a few pages. It was good to have something juicy to work on though. Speaking of juicy, the other story I subbed was a health scare about apricot seeds. If you eat too many you can die as they create cyanide. Or something. So just watch out.
I forgot to mention the other day I had an email back from another potential client - Copenhagen Council. It was very brief, just a short note saying thank you and that they would keep my details on file. Slightly disappointing but it's early days. It's frustating being away for so long. Having actually got off my arse and made a start on it I would have liked to keep the momentum going. But needs must and I have to do this, just to pay the bills. I don't know how long it will be before any income starts rolling in. Not too long I hope!

Blue Monday

2006-04-10T23:22:00.000+02:00

My spirits were at a low ebb today. I noticed it after I got back from my grandad's. I had an hour before I had to leave for work and so I sat in the living room for a bit and listened to an album I just bought by a band called Band of Horses. It's an amazing album but it wasn't the music getting me down. I think I started to feel a sense of routine creeping in to things. I guess it's a combination of being back in St Albans, seeing some of the same old faces, the job losing its lustre. Familiarity breeding contempt is a truism, at least in my case. I just wanted to be back in Copenhagen today at any rate. Whether or not this business ever gets off the ground I feel proud of myself for upping sticks and moving there in the first place. I was so stuck before. The more down I got, the more I tried to get happy by relying on what was familiar. It's true that if you have nothing to look forward to, you just look back. Everything had become so formulaic and staid that I pretended that a comfortable, routine life was what I wanted. I was very wrong. You do have to take risks sometimes. Try something new, things which make you feel nervous. God, this is all real down home stuff isn't it but in my case it was true. I literally was going nowhere fast. Maybe that's why I feel a bit blue today; some of those old feelings have resurfaced. Whatever I do now, I'm just pleased that I have got some of my old appetite for life back.
Read some good stuff in the Media Guardian today, especially this article by Jeff Jarvis. You may have to sign up if you haven't already but it's required reading for anyone blogging at the moment. His basic premise is that with advertisers tripping over themselves to position their products on the web and, increasingly, in the blogosphere, ways need to be found to make it easier for bloggers and ad people to come together. The ad people need to know which blogs are relevant to them and bloggers want a simpler way of realising their revenue potential. Later in the section there's an article about workplace bloggers getting into hot water. It was fairly humdrum stuff but one statistic stood out: 70,000 blogs are started every day. What a daunting thought.

New arrival

2006-04-09T13:04:00.000+02:00

Sorry for the delay; yesterday I woke up at my friend's place in London with a bit of a hangover so came back to St Albans as quick as I could and just vegged out on the sofa. My parents have Sky which is perfect hangover recovery material. I watched Malcolm in the Middle all day. That show is genius. There is a scene towards the end of one episode where Malcolm's mum is reassuring him that he's a nice boy and not the monster he thinks he's becoming. Wiping away a tear, she gives him a playful stroke on the head and sends him to bed. 'Night mum', he replies and then walks out of the bathroom. The camera pans out and Malcolm walks past his dad who has been sitting on the loo the whole time reading a newspaper. 'Night dad', says Malcolm casually. 'Night son.' Brilliant.
I started to feel human again so took a stroll through town down to my old local, the Farriers Arms. It was good to be back. When I arrived it was fairly quiet so I sat at a stool at the bar, chatted a little bit with the landlord and slowly sipped my pint. A window was open and the sun was setting. It was very peaceful. Not quite one of those moments where everything becomes clear but something still quite special. I chatted to some friends about my plans. An American chap who's been living in the UK for ten years or so gave me some good advice about tyring to slowly up the intensity of what I do. Making more calls each day etc. He got engaged a few weeks ago so we shook hands, clinked glasses. Around midnight he came back in with the good news that a couple everyone knows had just had their first child, a baby girl. Everyone cheered. By then I was drunk again. The landlady came out with a big bowl of stew and everyone who was still there had a midnight feast. Sometimes England can be the best place in the world.

On the net

2006-04-07T12:16:00.000+02:00

One thing I have noticed about having a blog is how rapidly it takes on addictive properties. Although I doubt there are few, if any, regular readers, somehow once you start throwing this stuff out there it's difficult to stop. I guess it's a question of mediums. I've tried keeping written diaries before but soon gave up. This feels more substantial in some way. More real. Seeing your words on the screen is enough to make any would-be writer feel happy I suppose. I first used the net in about 96 or 97 and I remember clearly the thrilling strangeness of making my first online acquaintance. I think I wrote a review of a Knut Hamsun book on Amazon and noticed that someone else had written a similarly positive piece so I mailed them. He was Spanish and we kept an email exchange up for a day or two and then we stopped, neither of us knowing exactly what the point in it all was I imagine. Now the net is a blur of communication with people you know and, more frequently, people you don't. One thing that fascinates me is the way people personalise the way they use the net. Do people really surf that much these days? For many people, their net use is limited to work and for them it's usually a case of 'log on in the morning, check the beeb or Guardian, have a look at the weather, check the forum they post on, do a spot of banking and then offer to make some coffee'. Getting off your favourites list takes a fair bit of effort these days! Regardless of that, the net is still a huge part of many people's lives these days. I can't imagine how I would successfully get this business off the ground without it. To date, I've used the web to search for clients, get advice on tax and setting up my own site and look for potential competitors. I've used email to contact clients, MSN to communicate with a new contact, Myspace messaging to make new contacts, Skype to stay in touch with my girlfriend while I'm in the UK and this blog to spew out all the detritus clogging up my brain. And that's probably not the half of it. Obviously business existed before the net but business with the net is a different kettle of fish. It's sink or swim in that unless you're at ease with the nature of modern communication then you're just treading water. Here endeth today's sermon.

A bite

2006-04-06T23:34:00.000+02:00

Well, sort of. The Royal Library rang me today. Or rather a bonkers-sounding lady called Gertrude did. She said she liked what I had done with the text promoting their Napoleon exhibition but that as the exhibition was closing in a week there seemed little point in using it. I didn't really know what to say to that. I was a little bit flustered as I was in the middle of a busy London street with ambulances and police cars whizzing past. I said thanks and there then followed a rather interminable discussion about my email address. It seemed she had read the 1 as an i or an L and so she had not been able to mail me. She spoke extremely slowly so all this had taken about ten minutes by now and I was confused as to whether I should feel crushed or kind of elated. At any rate she now has my correct email address so maybe that's not the last I've heard of them. Overall I feel happy to have actually had a response. Maybe when I get back to Denmark I can follow it up with a call and remind them I exist.

As for the rest of my day, I went to work and discovered that payroll have not had any record of my being there in the past month and so I won't get paid now until next Friday. My overall boss was back today after a while off ill. The last time he saw me was for the last of four trial shifts I did a couple of months ago. In his absence his deputy has been the one giving me shifts. Anyway, the reports back must have been reasonably positive because he asked if anyone had talked to me yet about 'taking me on'. It's nice to feel wanted but I am completely committed to getting this company off the ground. I'm knackered. I'm going to watch the highlights of the Masters and eat cheese.

Kierkegaard

2006-04-05T18:00:00.000+02:00

Right opposite the entrance to my street in Norrebro, Copenhagen, is the Assistens Kirkegard (Kirkegard means churchyard in Danish). Hans Christian Andersen is buried there as is this chap. For any of you who have struggled through 100 pages of Either/Or and then gone to lie down in a darkened room, the site of his final resting place may be of some interest. But I doubt it.

Heading back to the UK in a bit so my business empire will be on hold for a week or two but I'm feeling pretty good about things. I'm glad to at least have the ball rolling; it's good to know (roughly) where I'm headed. Made a couple of good contacts today. Rang a chap who runs a company in the UK offering translation and editing services to UK companies doing business in Scandinavia and vice versa. Sent him my CV and he said there was a good chance of him sending some stuff my way. Anyway, I have a bag to pack. Cheers.

Off topic

2006-04-05T09:57:00.000+02:00

Daniel Johnston

I think I'll probably be doing this a lot in the future (going off topic) but I guess the best blogs grow organically. Anyway, here's something I just came across at Said the Gramophone. If there's any Daniel Johnston fans out there then you may already know about this but if not then this film will, I'm sure, be well worth checking out. I've watched the trailer a few times now and it does give you a good feel of his music. Extremely fragile, like very old glass. Anyway, go and have a look at The Devil and Daniel. Interestingly, the title seems to come from an article a journalist in Austin, Texas wrote about Daniel back in the 80's. As not so many people know, journalists don't usually write headlines as well, so, as the blog on the site notes, the credit belongs to a sub-editor on the paper. He or she is probably still there telling everyone they know: 'That's my bloody headline, the bastards!'
Back on topic, I should have been paid by my paper on Tuesday - in fact I should have been paid the last three Tuesdays in a row - but I haven't been. Now my loan repayment is due in two days and I have no way of making it other than extending my overdraft. Plus my mum texted last night, apparently I owe £50 in phone calls. Sigh.

In God I Thrust

2006-04-04T20:45:00.000+02:00

One thing I've noticed about Copenhagen is the abundance of pretty cool graffiti. I quite like this one. It was right next to a church coincidentally enough. Not much to report on the business front. I've approached two organisations now with examples of what I can do. I took some text off their sites and reshaped it, correcting grammar and spelling and whatnot. No bites yet but I feel fairly confident in the service I'm offering. I think it's important that I have a website set up sooner rather than later, even if it's just to give the illusion of professionalism. Ideally I will have a client or two to bung up on the site but we'll see. I'm heading back to the UK tomorrow for ten days or so. Should be able to get a fair bit of work but in a way it's annoying to have to go home just when I'm making some headway here. I'll call the two organisations I've contacted so far before I go. Even if it's a no it will be useful to get some feedback. I put the blog up on an Everton supporters' forum I like and got some fairly positive responses which was good. I think the idea of starting your own company is quite popular with people of a certain age. Usually we've worked for quite a while - it doesn't matter what industry - and wageslaving is starting to take its toll. Self-sufficiency is extremely appealing but for most people the financial risk is too great. I'm lucky here in Denmark, our rent is much cheaper than an equivalent place in London. As for me I'm happier than I have been in a long time. I ride my bike, go for coffee, eat pizza in the evenings with my lovely girlfriend and monkey around on the net. What more can a boy want?

The beginning

2006-04-03T20:40:00.000+02:00

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.