Five Years of Freelancing…..yikes

Blimey – it has now been 5 years since I entered the world of freelancing / consultancy. Not a clue at the time what that meant really but knew it was time for a change. 10 years left to make a difference and whilst still enjoying my time at CGL – i needed something knew. And they did too. Pleased they’ve continued to flourish in my absence – not that there was any doubt. Have bumped into different old friends recently who have their adult children working for CGL describing ‘hard work, supportive colleagues and great values’.

So five years in and life has come full circle – there’s no bookings in my diary and just a long hot summer to look forward to. This time in 2020 we were still in lockdown which seems like a lifetime ago only yesterday. We were blessed at the time – both the D’s and one partner moved in for a while and we had a much more sociable time at home than many. 5 years on D1 has sold her place 10 minutes down the road and is moving to Bristol. D2 has moved from Bristol and is living it up in East London – right by the West Ham stadium. So nice and quiet at the weekends.

It’s different this time of course – no work commitments now is less daunting than it was 5 years ago. Life has moved on – I think I’ve become a ‘better’ external support to many, have a great set of colleagues around me and be fortunate enough to do some work that has tested me intellectually as well as practically. I remain grateful for the many people over the last 5 years who have trusted me, pushed me, listened to the bits that made sense and dumped the nonsense. I’m also much better at not doing much…. although my golf handicap has come down by 6 shots in that 5 years.

One of the more pleasant changes over that period has also been ditching most social media. Use Facebook for keeping up with some friends and family. But please to have ditched Twitter – a feeling that only grows nicer the longer you spend away from it. Musk is bad enough – but the continual amplification of confected rage is just tiresome. The horrors in Gaza when I kept seeing sensible friends defending abhorrence and celebrating atrocity. Not being around Twitter has given me more time and space to read he detail not just baulk at the screaming headline.

Been thinking a lot about confected outrage over the weekend – and the lessons politicians continue to fail to learn from history. Glastonbury has always had radical politics at its heart – no amount of glamping and commercial overkill could dampen it entirely. So politicians getting furious and demanding answers to why some relatively unknown bands are making political statements – is as confected as it is meaningless. Streeting demands to know ‘why we were subjected to this outrage on our TV screens’…. because as we know TV’s don’t have off switches even if it was believable for one nanosecond that he was sitting down with a cuppa to watch Bob Vylan.

Meanwhile the same politicians have said nothing about Israel’s latest enforced movement of people out of Northern Gaza and the UN descrobes nowhere in Gaza as being safe.

I’d prefer our politicians to be angry about stuff like that.

I’ll be watching Kneecap next weekend – supporting a band I am going to see. I’m a bit ambivalent about them to be honest – but the rest of the line up is exciting and they probably need all the solidarity they can get right now. I can’t believe the authors of most of our anti-terrorism legislation expected it be used against C-list rap bands.

So the summer is now mine – managed to survive almost blowing myself yesterday when I forgot the simple lesson that ‘I can’ ‘fix’ and ‘electricity’ should probably not feature in the same sentence – so having literally blown up the lawnmower and remiving most of the hairs on my left arm in a minor explosion…. I’ve bought a new mower.