Freelance Massage

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I attempted to turn a fantasy into reality and explored the potential of freelance journalism. The lesson was learned. The pay is crap, it's really hard work, and, like being a travel writer, turning your hobby into a job can distance you from the very reason you enjoy the hobby in the first place.

Still, the Freelance Journalism course was the trigger for anumber of articles, some of which are dated, some of which are awful, and a couple that are OK. I like this one - it is of the nature of freelance journalism - and swedish massage - and me...



‘Freelance Journalism – Eight 1 hour lessons at the Intensive Language Centre’.

Well that’s a potential problem already. How intensive do I want my freelance journalism to be? Are we to be taught the art of dodging bullets, how to write and drink at the same time, the correct way to grow a four-day stubble and how to remove nicotine stains from one’s fingers?

Language Centre? Well English I imagine. It’s the only language I speak for one thing. Is journalism a language? Or do journalists communicate with each other in some sort of code through their writing or is it more of the nod/wink and silly handshake method preferred by Masons? Is it a question of tools? Are we to be taught to be flamboyant, to speak in punchy paragraphs, to translate, to spell, to punctuate, annotate, illustrate, photograph and plagiarise?

I walk to the Intensive Language Centre in the drizzling rain on Day 1. So far so good. I could be in London, probably Fleet St in the good old days, whenever that was. The Intensive Language Centre certainly seems to be rather intense. When I was a kid this was Cleveland St Boys High, and it had a definite fearsome reputation for thuggery, so that on this day I approach the building with some trepidation.

I follow a girl, mid-20s, cascading black curls, to the office. Students are being told which room to go to and how to get there. I quietly hope for the girl to ask for Freelance Journalism, although she doesn’t look the type. I admit to myself I don’t actually know what journalists look like. I think of them as small mug-shot boxes next to blocks of text or as caricatured icons (of the computer kind – not the religious kind) on the internet. But in any case, she doesn’t look the type.

“What course?”, we are asked.

“Swedish Massage”, she replies.

“Freelance Journalism”, I despondently mumble.

I follow her curvaceous hips up the stairs. I don’t choose to it’s just that our classes are next door to each other. Maybe it's true, I think - a stereotype based on a reality. Way out of my league alas. I'd be a blabbering mess just trying to talk to her let alone chat her up.

I console myself with the knowledge that my true skills are best kept to dark rooms late at night, tapping into a typewriter, a waft of cigarette smoke curling up to the slowly rotating ceiling fan. I could travel the world and be handsomely paid to do it, meet the strange and wonderful, tell the world of the globe’s majesty, contribute to world peace and understanding and make them laugh, make them laugh, make them laugh.

But just think of what I could do if I knew Swedish Massage.