Pen for hire

I am hardly ever at a loss for words. Usually only when a teenager cleans up without being asked. It happens. Rarely, but it does.

Most of the time, I am quite erudite. However, now that I must resort to shameless self-promotion, I find it a little challenging.

I’ve sold all sorts of things for other people, but (like following good advice) it’s easy to do it for others and hard to do for yourself. Perhaps I should hire another writer to do it for me? The thought has crossed my mind, but needs must and all that good stiff upper lip stuff.

Basically, I’m in the market for a writing job – permanent, freelance you name it. (I draw the line at wedding invites. Thanks to the pangolin-eating moron that started this pandemic I find myself armed with a pencil without a word to write.

If you feel like feeding the hungry mouth of a copywriter, please feel free to drop me a line. This fish is hungry and will bite (as long as the lure isn’t a Brussels Sprout).

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The Pandemic and the Pangolin

“Mummy, how did the world end?”

“Well darling. Some idiot ate a pangolin.”

Why on God’s green earth would you want to eat an animal as inedible looking as a pangolin? Is there even meat on a pangolin? Enough for a meal?

In short, some covidiot went to lunch and set off a pandemic that has wrecked the world. Well, that’s what they say. When the conspiracy theories sound far more credible than the actual story I’m tempted to go with the official story. Who on earth would make up a tale so bizarre?

What it has brought into stark reality for me (like the world in the morning when I put on glasses and see my sleep-mussed face in the mirror – horrifying clarity) – is just how little actual life skills I possess. Basically, I’m a bit of a dud in a global crisis. I’m not even a good gardener. I suppose I could write the spin? Not very helpful.

Now that my job has been torpedoed by a single-celled organism, I find myself having to look at my old world with new eyes. It’s at turns exhilarating and abjectly terrifying. I’m still in the free fall hoping to land on a bed of feathers but concerned that it may actually be very sharp rocks.

I can’t really tell because I’m too scared to put on my glasses and a blurry world seems less intimidating than the cold hard truth.

If only I knew who that pangolin-eating mofo was, I’d steal the TARDIS, go back a few months and sic a Dalek on him. (That’s a Doctor Who reference. My daughter kindly suggested that I add this note for those who don’t know the Doctor. So sad.)

It befuddles my brain that the world (and my world) has been brought to its knees by a takeaway lunch.

A copywriter’s lament

I’m stuck in a mire of stupid rhymes

Keen to avoid insane deadlines

I want to work above the line

Put my feet on the desk and pass the time

Go out for lunch on the company card

Wear a beret that is tres avant garde

Yet here I sit, sit , sit, sit

Today I do not like it, not one little bit

You want some vernacular in that AV script?

Then write it yourself you dumb little shit

But I bite my tongue and taste the blood

The sweat and tears that fall in a flood

One morning soon I shall climb to the roof

And leap into space with my parachute