A musical story for Christmas

I can’t recall whether it was Christmas or Easter when I first heard Lily Somerville sing. I do recall, however, that it was some six or seven years ago, at St John’s Church in Tamworth and it was during one of the major church services of the Catholic year.

Lily, who was around 14 years old at the time, is the daughter of a close friend of mine whom I first met at St John’s. My friend is massively musical; she plays in the church folk group and can happily lead musical evenings at home. 

Her late mother, in turn, was so musical that when she passed away, the family donated a piano to the church in her memory.

Lily, then, has music in her blood - and in her voice. On that evening, I sat captivated as she performed the most remarkable solo of church music for a girl of her age. “She’ll go far,” I thought.

Six or seven years later, her musical journey has taken her to the University of Falmouth in Cornwall, where she is studying for a degree in popular music - and this post is a shameless plug in an effort to get her and her new musical partner one step further up the ladder.

After that evening at St John’s, Lily went off my radar as she completed her school studies; but then, in early-2012, she started to post regularly on Twitter and Facebook as one-half of Lily and Meg, the group she had just formed with a fellow Falmouth student, Londoner Megan Markwick.

I watched and listened with increasing interest as they told of new songs they had written and of gigs they were planning around Cornwall. They wrote haunting modern-folk melodies and the voice which had so captivated me on that evening in church came back into my brain - this time, with an equally-impressive partner in the shape of Meg.

I liked their Facebook page, followed them every day - and then something quite remarkable happened. As editor of British Naturism magazine, I discovered that there was space for additional entertainment in the programme at Nudefest (British Naturism’s week-long summer event in June at Newperran in Cornwall, less than 30 miles from Falmouth).

Could they? Would they? How would the daughter of a friend I knew purely through church react to the chance to play at a naturist event?

I decided to approach her mum first. If she said ‘No’, all bets were off. But she didn’t. She quickly replied that it was an interesting proposition and that she would put it to Lily and Meg.

Within days, they got back to me - the show was on.

In fact, it became two shows. The original schedule only called for them to be a brief part of the entertainment at BN’s visit to the Eden Project on the opening night of Nudefest. Yet they were so well-received and so unfazed at playing before an audience of naturists that we asked them back to perform on the final night, at Newperran itself.

A little context is required here. Newperran has a bar/lounge, which we clear to make way for the disco equipment and dancefloor area. I’ve no doubt it’s tightly-packed on most weekend nights in the summer. On the final night of Nudefest, there are 250-300 naked people chatting, laughing, drinking, dancing. As I have said to ‘textile’ friends, once you have been to a naturist disco, you will never want to go to a disco clothed again.....

You could call it a daunting atmosphere in which to perform, then. But Lily and Meg, who had never been among a group of naturists until six days previously, were magnificent.

That crowded room fell silent for 35 minutes as they performed to what must have been one of the biggest audiences of their career so far - and they and the bar staff were the only clothed people in the room.

They weren’t even fazed when offered an encore alongside a naked band. It was a remarkable performance which I know won them a tremendous number of admirers.

Since then, they have written plenty more new songs, toured around Britain, produced an EP of their best music and I recently saw them play a fine set for a discerning (clothed!) audience at the Yardbird in Birmingham - one of the city’s best-respected venues for up-and-coming bands. 

It looks as if 2013 could be a great year for Lily & Meg. So get along to their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lilyandmeg?fref=ts and buy their EP at http://lilyandmeg.bandcamp.com/. If they are in your area, go and see them. As for British Naturism, we are hopeful of seeing them again at least once in 2013. They sent me a Christmas card last week, thanking BN 'for showing us such support and giving us the most unique gig opportunities we've had to date!"

Aren’t some of life’s journeys remarkable? I have a feeling that this one still has quite a way to go... 

Take my word for it - this post is worth reading

I love to write. Blog posts, website articles, newspaper features, press releases, magazine features, whole magazines - as long as it requires my brain to engage first gear and fingers to put pen to paper (or to keyboard), I love what I do.

Recently, I discovered part of the reason why. A time-management expert, whom I shall shortly be endorsing on LinkedIn, told me that I struggle with planning, organisation, tidiness and ‘To Do’ lists largely because I’m primarily a ‘right-brained creative’ person.

This is as opposed to being a ‘left-brained logical’ person, who is detail-oriented and strategic. Although we are all a combination of both, most people lean more to one side than the other.

It may not astound you, then, to learn that while HR people, accountants and lawyers tend to be mainly left-brained, the writers, musicians, designers and marketing people among us tend to be right-brained.

As I often say if I’m following one of the former in doing a 40-second pitch at a business networking event: “He/she does the numbers, I do the words...”

And words are what I do. The average 80-page edition of British Naturism magazine contains between 70-80,000 words; I probably write about 15-20 per cent of those while I certainly read (or certainly should read) about 90-95 per cent of them. I proofread roughly another 5,000 words every Saturday night for the sports pages of a newspaper in Birmingham. I’m about to embark on a fascinating new project, ghostwriting a book on business coaching, which will be 15-20,000 words long.

I recently completed a contract for a client who wanted 30 500-word articles for a website which he was having redesigned. I ghostwrite a 1,200-word weekly sports column for the aforementioned newspaper; thankfully, the columnist can talk for England, which does help my cause.

I am discussing the possibility of working for an acoustics expert, who may be great at his job but admits that explaining it on paper/the internet is a completely different matter.

Words, then, are my life; wordsmiths are my heroes. In no particular order, AA Gill, Robert Crampton, Hugh McIlvanney, Martin Samuel, Alan Lee, Giles Coren, Christopher Martin-Jenkins are the people I wish I had become. In 25 years in the words trade, I’ve worked with a lot of very good, some great, reporters - but very few great wordsmiths.

Three come immediately to mind, but I won’t name two of them, because they may well be reading this.

The other was Michael Blair, long-time rugby correspondent of The Birmingham Post in the days when that newspaper was even more widely-admired and poorly-read than it is today.

Blair, a Welshman of the beer, rugby and poetry persuasion, could write columns of jaw-dropping brilliance. He was vehemently against the professionalisation of rugby and is probably apoplectic at the thought of England turning out in purple shirts. 

He could make 800 words on Moseley v Coventry read like Dylan Thomas and the sub-editors on the sports desk would fight among ourselves to have the chance to handle his copy. 

He would laugh you out of the saloon bar for saying so, but he was the ultimate ‘right-brained creative.’

He was magnificent and knew he was. It would be instructive to learn just how many people read The Post purely for Blair - I know I did, when my dad bought home a copy from work every day.

Great wordsmiths like that make newspapers - these days, they also make blogs, websites  and any other of the myriad ways in which we consume words in this technological age.

I don’t think I am anywhere near as good as any of those named above but I’m increasingly coming to realise that being ‘right-brained creative’ makes me very good at what I do - and the number of people who have recently lined up to endorse me on LinkedIn for related skills such as writing, editing and blogging proves it.

The basic human need to be admired by your peers is a whole new blog post in itself, but recent events have given Martin Warrillow Publishing Services Ltd (as we now are), a big lift.

As 2012 nears its end, I’m hoping that the new year will be the biggest and best yet for MWPS - whatever happens, rest assured that I’ll be writing about it here.

An anniversary worth remembering

I try not to mention Mrs W too often in these musings. After all, it’s my blog and as she’s generally a private person, I don’t think she would take too kindly to having her life broadcast all over t’interweb.

However, this week marks an occasion which can’t be allowed to pass without some form of recognition. Wednesday October 24 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of our first date; the first time that Martin Philip Warrillow and Carmel Mary Gallagher, as she then was, set eyes on each other.

And this was no ordinary first date. It seems extraordinary to recount the tale a quarter-of-a-century later, but this was a blind date.

We were set up - and set up in a manner that still makes people go ‘aaahhh.....’ when the story is told.

My best friend (with whom I worked) and her best friend (with whom she worked) had recently started seeing each other. And they had decided that we, two lonesome and relatively private souls who would often have trouble saying ‘boo’ to a goose, were made for each other.

Photographs were exchanged and, to be fair, arms were put behind backs to a certain degree before we both agreed to meet each other. After all, nothing was going to come of it and one of us probably wouldn’t turn up anyway.

But both of us did turn up. As Cilla Black’s Blind Date was broadcast on ITV (I swear I haven’t made that up, by the way...) we met under a street light next to a telephone box on a housing estate in Tamworth.

We went for a few drinks in various Tamworth hostelries which no longer exist (Corvettes and Manhattans, anyone?), I introduced her to the intricacies of supporting Tamworth FC, drove her home at the end of the evening and that was that.

Except that I rang her the following evening....and the following evening.......and we decided to meet again the next weekend.  

Which we did - and if my mind doesn’t play tricks on me after all these years, it wasn’t long before we went out for the evening with the couple who had set us up.

It also wasn’t long before Carmel was spending most evenings and weekends at my grotty bedsit in Tamworth town centre, which we still recall as ‘The Hammer House of Horror.’ We acquired a kitten, a story which deserves a blog post in itself, then began to realise that we had an astonishing amount in common.

So much so that it was no particular surprise to either of us when, in the spring of 1989, I asked her to marry me. That great event took place on July 21 1990 at St John’s RC Church in Tamworth, with the couple who had brought us together acting as best man and chief bridesmaid. An extra twist to the tale is that they, too, became husband and wife, being married in September 1990.

In the 22 years since our wedding day, we have climbed waterfalls in Jamaica; had a knife pulled on us in Morocco; lost each other for three hours in the deserts of Fuerteventura; enjoyed the holiday of a lifetime in South Africa; lost the aforementioned kitten in the half-built roof of the apartment complex in which we lived at the time (we found her safe and well and she died of old age in 2007); helped each other through various illnesses and spent rather too long in hospitals; enjoyed wonderful holidays at my father’s house in Spain and with Carmel’s Irish relatives in County Leitrim; argued, bickered, smiled, laughed, cried, shouted, screamed, agreed, disagreed; acquired another cat; had some fabulous meals and some dreadful ones; both got tattoos; become ardent naturists; moved house only once (believe me, that was enough); attended too many funerals and too few weddings; suffered through the gloom of job loss and still come out safely at the other side; been as near to penniless as we ever want to get; watched me set up my own business.

In short, done everything that couples who have known each other for 25 years can expect to do. 

And we’re still here. We believe firmly in marriage as a force for good and that all that stuff about ‘for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health’ actually means something. 

Who knows whether we’ll make it to 26 years, never mind 30, or 40, or 50? But as we come to mark the anniversary of the most important date in our lives with a quiet meal in a local Indian restaurant, I know we can look back and say that we both did the right thing when we decided to meet under that street light on that Tamworth housing estate. 

A high-speed night of great entertainment

One of my most enduring memories of growing up in Kidderminster in the mid-1970s is of the man who lived over the road from us. 

If my fading brain serves me correctly, his name was John Foley and he owned a butcher’s shop on the council estate where my grandparents lived.

There are two things I will never forget about him, though; he had the most spectacular ginger sideburns and he was a fanatical Cradley Heath speedway fan (to my knowledge, the two facts are not linked).

Every week, he and his family would head off to Dudley Wood to watch the Heathens race motorbikes which had one gear and no brakes and could reach speeds of up to 70mph.

In those days, Cradley were one of the best-loved sporting clubs in the Black Country; they had a rivalry with their near-neighbours at Wolverhampton, as well as those across the West Midlands at Coventry, which made speedway hugely popular. The crowds were in their thousands, meetings had regional and national TV coverage (on proper television not pay-TV, which didn’t exist) and the riders were national names.

For a few years before I went off to university in 1982, I became infected by John’s passion. I, too, would drive the 20-odd miles to Dudley Wood on summer Saturday nights and inhale the pungent smell of the methanol which powers speedway bikes; marvel at the skill of riders who could swing a motorbike around a corner at 70mph with consummate skill, only occasionally ending up with a broken bone or three.

But then, things turned sour. Dudley Wood is now a housing estate and although Cradley Heath still have a speedway team, they race in the National League (the third level of the sport in Britain, below the Elite and Premier Leagues) and do so at Monmore Green, the home of Wolverhampton. 

Yet speedway is still alive elsewhere in the West Midlands. Wolverhampton and Coventry have teams in the Elite League, as do Birmingham Brummies. The Brummies have been around on and off since the sport’s heyday in the 1940s and ‘50s, but their latest reincarnation, which began in 2007 and is based at Perry Barr greyhound stadium, has risen to the Elite League and they are looking very likely to reach the four-team end-of-season playoffs, which begin at the start of October.

I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the Brummies take on Kings Lynn Stars last week and although it was my first speedway meeting since at least 1981, I felt instantly at home. The familiar smell of methanol, the roar of the bikes as they flew out of the starting gate and yes, the ‘how do they do that?’ feel as the riders flung their machines around the four bends, seemingly losing control and then, a split-second later, bringing everything back into line and flying down the straight for a few seconds before reaching the next turn (the average race takes about a minute to complete four laps of a 300-metre track).

Mrs W and I watched the first two races of the night from a rickety wooden stand on the pits bend, loving the smell and the noise and getting covered in shale dust, before we headed up to the directors’ box to wash down the final 13 heats with a pint and a really quite splendid curry.

Plenty of the spectators watched from the bar area, where huge plate-glass windows shielded out the noise but still gave an excellent view of the races, while the really hardy stood outside on an increasingly chilly night, with just the width of the greyhound track between them and the action; if Mrs W hadn’t been with me, that’s probably where I would have been. I’m a firm believer in standing up at football matches (one of the many reasons I love non-league) and sports like speedway need to be viewed close-up to get a sense of just how brave and skilled the riders are.

The riders, incidentally, are a story in themselves. Heats are scored three points for a win, two for second place, one for third and none for fourth and last place. Riders get paid per point so if they struggle, they don’t get paid. 

That’s why a lot of the best riders travel Europe, earning money by racing for teams in speedway’s heartland in Poland, Russia and Scandinavia as well as in the UK. So they could be in Coventry on Monday, Sweden on Thursday, Poland on Sunday and so on, throughout the summer season from March to October. It’s a tough life, never mind the constant risk of injury and, heaven forbid, death.

If you’ve never been to a speedway meeting, I urge you to give it a go. We enjoyed two hours of thrilling entertainment which saw the Brummies stage an impressive mid-meeting comeback to win 51-41 and further boost their play-off chances. 

 Generally, I don’t ‘get’ motorsport. I would rather paint the kitchen than watch a Formula One Grand Prix or a MotoGP race, yet my first visit to speedway in 30 years reminded me why I loved those Saturday nights at Dudley Wood. I’ll certainly be going back. 

Cut off from the world....or so it seemed

How can it take 20 days to unlock a mobile phone? Regular readers will recall that my last post was largely concerned with a nasty incident involving a Nokia handset, a car dashboard, an open window and a sharp left-hand turn into Mill Street, Tamworth. 

I had hoped to be reconnected within a couple of days, having bought a cheap handset from a well-known supermarket and acquired a replacement SIM card, but a cashflow crisis and then the fact that my new handset had to be sent away to be unlocked scuppered that.

But TWENTY DAYS? As anyone who has tried to contact me will know, at times I’ve felt like I was living in Outer Mongolia. Of course, there are times when it is useful to be incognito (the Friday afternoon of Derby Beer Festival, for a start!) but such is the nature of our all-pervasive communications world that not having a mobile can sometimes leave you feeling as if you have had your arm cut off.

Is anyone trying to contact me with offers of work? How many millions of text messages have I missed? How many of them were not viral jokes or cold calls, but actually important? Is there a problem with the switchover? Will I have to change my number? If I do, what happens to the £75 worth of swanky new business cards I have just had printed - which feature my current number?

It’s not been a fun three weeks, although I must say ‘Thank You’ to the man in the repair shop, who looked at me with increasing concern as my weekly visits became twice-weekly, then daily.

However, I’m now back in the land of the mobile phone and spent most of yesterday trying to fathom it out. It’s not a smartphone; it doesn’t make the tea, it just allows me to make calls, send texts, get on t’interweb and play games, should I wish. But it’s still complicated enough for someone who spent a few minutes trying to extract the SIM card from inside the handset to get at the authentication code. 

 And, of course, although I have been able to retain my phone number, I've lost everyone's numbers because my old SIM card was smashed. So if I haven't already asked and you think I had your number on my old phone, please PM me on Facebook or e-mail me with the details. It might help me feel as if I am back in touch with the world.

Up, down, broke, smashed - but still loving life!

It’s amazing that it’s been two-and-a-half years since I had what my wife insists on calling a ‘proper’ job. 

She defines that as one where you go into work at a given time of day, come home at (more or less) a given time of day and your employer drops a wedge of cash into your bank on a given day of every month.

The reality, of course, is that ‘proper’ jobs are few these days - especially in the world of the wordsmith. Since I was last in full-time work, my previous employer has had another two rounds of cutbacks and I learnt this week that the disease has spread to Australia. 

A friend of mine on a newspaper in Cairns could soon be faced with uprooting his young family to Brisbane (just over 1,000 miles away) or leaving the newspaper world which has been his life since the age of 16 - nearly three decades. 

There are jobs in the media, of course; I could move to London, while the work I do from home and which I love dearly as editor of British Naturism is as good as it gets, in my view. 

But apart from BN, I am one of many thousands of freelances scrambling to find work at a time when the market keeps diminishing. 

And after two-and-a-half years, following 24 years in newspapers, the ups and downs of this lifestyle are still the hardest thing for me to cope with. Take last week, for instance; I had a meeting in a smart Birmingham hotel with a client and a web designer over a project which could be one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. We made good progress, continue to do so and although the rewards are not great at the moment, the future looks bright.

On Sunday, I saw the lead story of a column which I ghost-write appear on the back page of the Birmingham Sunday Mercury. We rarely admit it but weatherbeaten old hacks like me still get a thrill out of seeing something we’ve written appear on the printed (newspaper) page. 

Yet last week also saw letters demanding that the family car be given its MOT and new tax disc. In years gone by, that was just an annual distraction. At the moment, the financial side-effects of having the two land at once have knocked us sideways for a while.

Then, this week - to be precise, yesterday, Thursday July 5 2012. It began in great style as I gave a presentation about naturism and my work at BN to the Tamworth branch of 4Networking.

It isn’t me, but the 4N area leader, who has gone on record as saying that “Martin had the room riveted as his passion and delicate advocacy of what can be a debatable subject was handled beautifully’ Thanks, Debs!

The meeting got even better as I then met up with a local businessman I have been trying to engage with for a while to talk about work. We have a meeting lined up next week and if our proposals go ahead, it will be another big boost. 

This sits alongside a separate project I was discussing on Tuesday; one that I’m sure can work although I don’t want to jinx it.

So, all good, yes? Until I rested my phone on the dashboard of the car while driving Mrs W home yesterday evening, then watched it fly out of the open window when I turned a corner.

With hindsight, stopping on a busy road and trying to retrieve handset, SIM card, battery and cover was not the act of a sane, rational 48-year-old with a 2:1 degree. I could have been run over; I should have just shrugged my shoulders; but you don’t, do you?

So I ran the risk, gathered all the bits together, reassembled the phone - and realised that the screen was bent and shattered beyond recognition.

I’d really love an iPhone (purely for work purposes, obviously..) but I can’t afford one at the moment, so off I went this morning to our local branch of a well-known national supermarket to buy a cheap handset which I can get unlocked at a store in town.

Unfortunately, this tale ends on a note with which all owners of small businesses will be grimly familiar - the cashflow crisis. I have three hefty payments due in next week; they will be paid, I trust implicitly the people involved. But the money’s not there yet. The bank account contains nothing; nada, nowt, zilch, as they say. 

The phone will have to wait. So if you’re trying to reach me by phone this weekend, I’m afraid it’s the old-fashioned landline. Just like back in the days when I had a ‘proper’ job.

Fun in the sun? Well, we certainly had fun....

I shocked myself this morning when I realised that I’ve been blogging here for just over 12 months. It was on June 6 2011 that I first put finger to keyboard with a piece about my interest in a wide-ranging number of sports. That first post ended: “Those that can play sport, do; those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach, write about it, talk about it, express views of varying relevance and validity.... With a nod in the direction of my other interests, including real ale, as well as an occasional look at my professional life as a magazine editor, that is what this blog will do.”

In the 12 months since, I hope I’ve lived up that promise. It’s certainly been an enjoyable 12 months and if you delve into the archive of this blog, you’ll see that it has indeed been wide-ranging.

Football and ale have featured prominently, politics has nudged its way in occasionally, I’ve covered journalism, naturism, genealogy, business networking, my loathing for Dominic Littlewood..... I’ve never been short of topics and if there has been the occasional hiatus, it’s simply been down to time constraints rather than lack of ingenuity on your blogger’s part.

However, one thing doesn’t seem to have changed in 12 months - the dismal British summer weather. My third post, 366 days ago today, was about Nudefest, British Naturism’s annual seven-day extravaganza at Newperran Holiday Park in Cornwall. While acknowledging that those present had really enjoyed themselves, I posted: “The weather? Oh, the weather was dreadful. Howling gales, pouring rain, glowering stormclouds, only brief glimpses of the sun which is supposed to be the raison d’etre of naturism.”

Nudefest 2012, which took place from June 10-17, was equally storm-tossed. When Mrs W and I arrived on Thursday at about 1pm, there were already campers packing up their battered tents and heading home after less than four days. Once again, events which were designed to provide fun in the sun were moved indoors or simply abandoned (indoor nude archery, anyone? Thought not...).

It seemed to rain constantly, with an accompanying storm-force gale, from about 2pm on Thursday until late on Saturday evening and it was frustrating, to say the least, to wake on the final Sunday morning to see light clouds, blue sky and more than a hint of sun.

Still, as we did last year, we made the best of it and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The editor of British Naturism magazine gave a well-received talk about his work, a visit to Skinners Brewery in Truro will hopefully be repeated in 2013, the Eden Project played host to what I am told was an entertaining evening on the opening Sunday and there were pub games and a riotous quiz, as well as some excellent musical entertainment. 

BN members Billy Bottle and Martine played a unique brand of soulful music at what should have been ‘Picnic in the Park’ but which twice became ‘Picnic in the Bar,’ the traditional sing-along around the piano on the final night seemed to be delivered with more gusto than ever before and Nudefest gave a couple of excellent young student musicians the opportunity to shine before an unexpected audience.

Lily and Meg are first-year Popular Music students at the University of Falmouth. A chance conversation saw them become part of the programme at the Eden Project evening, before they wowed a crowd of over 200 naturists at Newperran on the final night. I’ve seen a fair few musicians at BN events in my time, but never have I seen a hushed room so spellbound by what they were seeing. 

As we made our way to our caravan late on Saturday evening, still full of adrenalin from conga-ing through the bar, out into the car park and back to the strains of “Is this the way to Amarillo?” Mrs W turned to me, smiled broadly and said: “You know, I really enjoyed myself tonight.”

Given the appalling weather, there can be no better praise for Nudefest 2012 than that.

Growing my network - and yours?

One of the hardest things about working for myself from home is the isolation that can come from working five days a week (often six), with only the family pet for company.

 Ideas that sound great when I run them past Muffy sometimes sound stupid when I mention them to a client. Convincing myself that I am doing the right thing, when there is no-one in ‘the office’ to agree or disagree, is more challenging than I would like.

 Which is why a lot of owners of small businesses go business networking.

 A whole raft of groups have sprung up across the country offering breakfasts, lunches, or evening events, where we can go to widen our business network, enhance our ability to pitch for business and get invaluable tips from those who are in the same situation.

 I’m currently a member of two of the more well-known national groups and since I started networking regularly, I’ve found that business opportunities are becoming more common.

 I wouldn’t yet say that Martin Warrillow Publishing Services is anything like a roaring success, but I do feel much more confident about the future than I did six months ago.

 If you’re a part of the networking world, you probably won’t need to ask the names of the well-known groups; if you aren’t but feel you should be, reply to this blog and I’ll email you some details.

 One of the things I’ve learned about networking etiquette is that you should never denigrate another group in public. It can be embarrassing when someone you meet turns out to be a member of a group which you have just been loudly denouncing in another conversation ten feet away.

 So I won’t do that but I will tell you about one of my favourite groups. Shortly before the end of summer 2011, a friend who is a lifecoach and fellow naturist told me about the Nationwide Alliance of Business Owners. He is a member of one of their groups in Leicester and although I felt that was too far to travel at 6.30am every other Friday, a spot of Googling uncovered a group in Solihull. That’s just half-an-hour down the M42 at that time of day, so I decided to give it a try.

  Part of the secret of business networking in this fashion is finding the right mix of people.  I’ve been to groups where you could feel noses being turned up at you. I’ve been to groups full of interesting people, but out of which I was never going to get any paid work.

 And then there was NABO Solihull; I’m not one for joining things straight away (I can’t afford it) but I joined after just one two-hour meeting. It was full of friendly people going through the same problems which I was facing, as well as people with years of experience who knew how to put us right.

 We had a laugh and a smile, some interesting discussion and I felt this was going to be the right thing to do. Within two weeks, I had won enough work to pay my annual membership fee.

 Since then, a lot of the group have become good friends, people I can turn to for advice as to how MWPS can move forward. That’s what business networking is designed to provide but I think very few groups do it as well as Solihull NABO.

 Our members include a web designer, a couple of business advisers, a learning and development consultant, three accountants, an acupuncturist, some life coaches, an estate agent, a photographer.....oh, and a freelance journalist and writer.

 But we would like some more members; it’s a cliche of business that if you stand still, you go backwards, so we are keen to increase our membership. 

 We meet every other Friday from 7.30am-9.30am at St John’s Hotel, Solihull. Breakfast costs £12 (although we do a starter deal for new members) and if you’re interested, I can let you have details of annual fees. Just reply to this blog

 And if you decide to try us, you’ll hear some of the best elevator pitches on the circuit...

Warrillow - that's an interesting name......

It is rather inevitable that with my surname, I am regularly asked: “That’s an unusual name, where does it come from?”

 And believe me, I’ve tried to find out. Even before ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ became a hit on the nation’s television screens and even before censuses stretching back to the 1870s could be easily searched on a computer screen, I was looking for my ancestors.

 I’ve trawled through ancient records books and newspaper files in libraries as far apart as Worcester and West Yorkshire; I’ve spoken to my few remaining elderly relatives; I’ve stood in graveyards in Bewdley and Dewsbury looking for signs on gravestones. And I’ve come up with........... precisely nothing.

 Watching ‘WDYTYA?’ drives me to distraction because the celebrities featured obviously have teams of archivists and researchers searching through the records before the programme is even commissioned. I, as the only son of an only son, have just me to do the research.

 And as the years go on and I become ever more aware that, as the childless only son of an only son, the Warrillow line will expire when I do, I become ever more determined to find some answers.

 So here’s where we stand at the moment. My father, whose 76th birthday on May 18 2012 coincides with the writing of this post (Happy birthday, Dad!) lives pleasantly and healthily in retirement in southern Spain.

 The death of his father is my first memory of the loss of a close family member. My grandfather spent all his working life in a carpet factory in Kidderminster, in the days when the industry provided employment for almost all the working-class men of that Worcestershire town.

 He retired in 1972 and like so many men of his ilk, even today, had no clue what to do with himself when going to work in the factory didn’t dominate his life.

 I still remember the telephone ringing early one Saturday morning in 1973 and waking me up, before my dad rushed out of our house to where his father lived, less than a mile or so away.

 I don’t remember my great-grandfather - and that’s where the problems start. Albert Warrillow appears to have been born in 1872 and died in 1963, a year before I was born. If you follow the obvious trail through websites such as ancestry.co.uk, it leads you back to a family who lived in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent in the 1830s. Yet family stories put the Warrillows in the 1870s in West Yorkshire, somewhere around Heckmondwike or Batley. It seems that they moved from there to Kidderminster, following the carpetmaking or woollen trades from the White Rose county.

 And I can find nothing in the records to support this. It seems that my great-grandfather was married twice, following the tragic early death of his first wife; when asked about it by my father when I was still a toddler, his second wife appears to have refused to say anything. These things were not talked about in Victorian England.

 So here is where the brick wall starts to be constructed. I have found records which suggest that Albert Warrillow was either born in or placed into a workhouse; I can’t find anything to confirm that. I have a piece of paper which purports to be Albert’s marriage certificate; where his father’s signature should be, there is a simple ‘X’

 This, of course, is not wholly surprising because many working-class people in these times were barely able to read and write - but it is of no use to those of us trying to trace the family history!

Now, I may have a name for Albert’s second wife but if you key that into the 1911 census records, it brings up roughly a dozen possible answers. The researchers and genealogists on ‘WDYTYA’ may have time to sort through them all in search of the right one; as a freelance journalist trying to keep the financial wolf from the door and the bills paid, I don’t.

 So I guess this post is aimed at those of you out there who have done this and succeeded. Is there a right and a wrong way to go about it? In the internet age, is it still necessary to spend hours in libraries and local records offices trawling through ancient documents?

 Of course, I don’t expect to find the answer in five minutes; I would just like to know that I’m going about it the right way - and that my dad and I can discover it before it’s too late.

How to lend a hand to British Naturism

Regular readers will have noted that there hasn’t been much activity here in recent weeks. Having initially started with the good intention of blogging at least once a week, it has slipped back since the New Year to being once a fortnight and this is my first post in almost three weeks.

 Shameful.

 Of course, blogs aren’t like newspapers, which have to come out on a particular day; that’s one of the good things about 21st-century technology but something which those of us weaned on daily press deadlines have to get used to.

 With blogs, you say something when you have something interesting to say and have time to say it.

 This hiatus hasn’t been due to a lack of ideas - my life is so full of interesting stuff these days that I could think of six different subjects a week - but rather a lack of time. I’m pleased to say that while my business career isn’t exactly booming, there seem to be enough things going on to keep me busy and, crucially, to keep financial despair at bay.

 But Mrs W and I have just spent the weekend at an event which I couldn’t fail to blog about - the first-ever British Naturism National Convention.

 Held at the picturesque Ilam Hall, a National Trust property right on the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border and high in the Peak District, NatConv was a conference and training weekend for everyone involved in the naturist community – clubs and swims, regions and individual members. 

 BN hoped that members would see it as inspiration to ‘do something’ with their interest in naturism, rather than just lying on a beach or jumping into a pool.

 Despite having around 11,000 members and putting on events all year round including extravaganzas such as Nudefest and the Alton Towers weekend, BN has a full-time staff of precisely zero.

 There are three ladies based in Head Office in Northampton, who do all the administrative work on a jobshare basis; there is general secretary Tracey Major, who oversees them and there are three paid consultants including commercial manager/marketing supremo Andrew Welch and yours truly as editor of the BN magazine.

 A lot of members think Andrew and I are paid employees whereas in fact, we are on annual contracts and have other work outside BN.

 Given that, how do we put on events such as AT, Nudefest, Great British Skinny Dip, Natconv and all the swims, saunas and ‘Big Days Out’ programme, as well as do all the promotional, marketing and campaigning work for the cause of making naturism ever more   acceptable?

 We do so with the sterling help of a small band of volunteer members, who give up their time to devote some effort to a particular little part of each project. That group is difficult to quantify, because people like to help out with things going on in their area, so that someone living in the south-west may put a lot of effort into Nudefest in Cornwall, but may not even attend our Blackpool weekend.

 So we are always in need of more willing help and NatConv was a weekend of talks, workshops and practical sessions designed to broaden the number of members equipped to help make a difference to naturism in the UK.

 The sessions included looking at how we sell naturism to the media, getting the best out of BN’s regional and club structure, a look at the progress being made on BN’s rolling three-year plan to improve the organisation and so on.

 It sounds quite intense but the 80 members who attended between Friday afternoon and noon on Sunday thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and all said they came away inspired to do their bit for naturism in 2012.

 That’s crucial; it’s a mantra of ours that although the age profile of BN members is not exactly teenage and the organisation could always do with more money (why not leave us £50 in your will?), BN wouldn’t die through old age or lack of cash, rather a lack of hands to help put on the growing list of events that help improve our revenue streams.

 Our growing band of Young British Naturists members (for the 18-30s) is really helping to spark some positive things, but more members mean more hands, more brains, more ideas... 

 If my ramblings encourage you to try naturism this summer (yes, we will have summer eventually!), why not join BN and get involved? It costs less than £1 a week for a couple, you could meet some fabulous people, visit some great events (Nudefest 2012, our week at Newperran in Cornwall, is just five weeks away)...and enjoy the special experience which is naturism.

 You could be helping keep BN alive for the next generation of naturists.

Dominic Littlewood, Dr Feelgood - and Alan Sugar

What’s the answer when you have a string of ideas for a blog post and not one of them is fully-formed? Steal an idea from one of my favourite columnists, Bob Crampton in The Times on Saturday and merge them all into one.

 So..... why did the lady who took my blood test yesterday fail to find more than a thimble-ful and thus have to resort to the other arm (and twice the pain) when Mrs W, a trained children’s phlebotomist, found the middle of the vein instantly when I told her what had happened? 

 Why did I take my eye off the online order form for a split second, so that a dress Mrs W has bought online from a well-known High Street chain will be delivered to a house ten doors down - and why is the occupier of that house on holiday for a week during Easter?

 How do I explain to Mrs W why I put my hand up when a friend was looking for someone to take 14 years’ worth of CAMRA’s monthly What’s Brewing magazine off his hands? And why have I stored them on the top shelf of my wardrobe, convincing myself that at some point in the next millennium, I will get round to reading them?

 Why are Tamworth stumbling towards the finishing line of the Blue Square Premier season - and who decided that the Telford away game, abandoned in a monsoon on Bank Holiday Monday, would be replayed next Tuesday, when I will be in Northampton all day at a British Naturism marketing committee meeting and unable to get to Shropshire in time?

 Why have Facebook unilaterally changed the design of my page without telling me? And yes, I know I get a valuable social networking resource for nothing, so why am I complaining?

Dominic Littlewood - why?

Why did I stay up until silly o’clock on Sunday night watching the play-off of the US Masters and drinking red wine and whisky?

 Why aren’t Dr Feelgood, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Wilko Johnson more widely acknowledged as musical geniuses?

  Why did my Easter weekend pass by in a haze of furniture polish, carpet dust and cat hairs?

   Why has it taken 25 years for one of my local pubs to wake up to the fact that it needs to advertise its wares outside the village and try to attract custom from the ‘posh’ side of Tamworth?

  Why have I allowed my briefcase to accumulate two years of ‘stuff’ which is undoubtedly important, but which I never read and probably ought to throw out?

  When am I going to complete the aforementioned throwing-out?

 How proud am I at having filled an A3 sheet of paper with ‘things to do’ this week and almost having completed the job by 9.30pm on Wednesday?

 Why, after 20 years, do I still not have a plan for making sure I read the Saturday and Sunday Times by midnight on Sunday - assuming, of course, that I have already thrown all the advertising nonsense, as well as the property and motoring sections, in the bin?

 And talking of the Sunday Times, why haven’t I shared with more people A.A Gill’s fantastic description of Alan Sugar in last weekend’s paper? For those of you who don’t know Gill, he writes the restaurant reviews in the Style section. Unrepentantly London-centric, he can spend 800 words discussing anything but the restaurant before approving of/condemning it in the final few paragraphs.

Last weekend, he was talking about a restaurant in Essex into which the supremo of The Apprentice has put some money; in the course of which he offered up this. “Alan Sugar, a man who looks like an angry testicle....”

 As several people have said since, they will never again be able to watch The Apprentice with a straight face.

Doing the consumer a dis-service

Customer service. A simple term, defined by that unbeatable and all-encompassing fount of knowledge, Wikipedia, as “a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.”

 For anyone in business, it shouldn’t be a difficult concept to grasp. Someone is sufficiently keen on what you are selling to want to give you money for it, whether it be sandwiches, lawnmowers, pints of beer or a new suit. Therefore, it is your job to send the customer away happy with their purchase and feeling good about the transaction.

 Why is it, then, that rather too many British businesses haven’t the slightest idea of what constitutes good customer service? Why is it that in rather too many shops, the staff are too busy deconstructing last Saturday’s Britain’s Got Talent to help my wife look for a blue cotton top in the sale in a size ten? 

 Why can I spend ten minutes wandering around a store which is attempting to sell good-quality outdoor clothing without the proprietor even bothering to ask if she can help me?

Why does a well-known national pub chain (a clue - there seems to be one in every town) appear to have got where it is today by a) seemingly not bothering to employ staff at all in some of its pubs? b) failing to train the staff it has in order that they know what a decent pint of real ale looks, smells and tastes like?

 And why do some famous tourist attractions send you from pillar to post to buy a ticket, then shut down at 4pm on a glorious spring day in mid-March - when there is at least another two hours’ worth of good daylight available and willing customers queueing to hand over their cash?

 This latter incident happened to me on a day trip to Liverpool last week. Mrs W was with me by the banks of the Mersey, hoping to ferry ‘cross it (as you do...) as the highlight of an excellent day. Various different members of staff pointed us in various different directions for the ticket office, so that we spent a good 20 minutes wandering up and down the Docks until we finally were able to attempt to buy a (very reasonably-priced) ticket.

 At which point we discovered that we had just watched the last ferry of the day pull away from the dockside some five minutes earlier - it was just after 3pm.

 We consoled ourselves with an excellent 45-minute open-top bus tour of the city. Yet when we got off, after the tour had finished, we found several people hoping to join the next bus only to be told by the driver: “Sorry, that’s it for the day.”

 It was just after 4pm. 

 All of these are examples of how too many British businesses won’t go the extra mile to market themselves to bring in more customers, or create the right impression so that the customers they do have will come back.

 I’ve recently learnt of an organisation which devotes itself to providing training in customer service for retailers. I’m sure they do a great job and a campaign with which I am involved is hoping to use their services in the near future.

 But surely all of the above should be second nature to anyone running a retail business. As a freelance journalist, I know that if no-one knows I exist, then no-one is going to offer me work (which is part of the reason I write this blog). I also know that if I get the chance to work for someone, I have to do it to the best of my ability in the hope that they will remember me in the future.

 Yet too many retailers in the UK don’t seem to get it; it’s too easy to blame the economic downturn and the fact that ‘nobody’s got any money’ for the ills of their business.

 I’m sure businesses in other countries don’t adopt this attitude; they realise that the consumer is king and if people are keeping what money they have in their wallets, you have to work that little bit harder to prise those wallets open.

 Until retail businesses who are supposed to be a major driver of our economy understand that, Government tinkering with tax rates will not make one jot of difference.

A nose for news - and those who want to snuff it out

When I was a young news reporter on the Tamworth Herald in the late-1980s, our first job every morning was ‘police calls.’

 As we were a weekly newspaper with no urgent deadlines and our office was a five-minute stroll from the local police station, one of us would arrive at the station at 9.15 every morning and the duty sergeant would painstakingly take us through the incident book from the previous 24 hours.

 Much of it was mundane; minor house break-ins, car thefts and so on. But almost every day, there was at least one story which would result in what journalists call a ‘page lead’ - a story good enough to be the main story on a page in the newspaper.

 Often, it was a major robbery - of a post office, a shop and so on. Perhaps it would be the details of a court case which we had been previously prevented from reporting for legal reasons.

 Whatever it was, we would race back to the office and tell our news editor - a fearsome boss, but a brilliant journalist of a kind which is now all but extinct. He would take in all the details, know instantly the facts which we had missed but needed to find out - and then tell us not to come back into the office until we had the story in full.

 Even I, who was so good at ‘door-knocking’ that I retreated to an office-based job after less than four years in the trade, would do it willingly.

 Quite often, if the story was really good, the news editor - I’ll call him ‘JB’ because that’s what we called him - had a way of finding out any details which his reporters had been unable to unearth. In the days before smoking indoors was banned, he would reach into his jacket pocket, pull out a packet of 20, put a cigarette in his mouth with one hand (and light it at the same time), pick up the phone with the other hand and put in a call to the local police station. 

 Ninety-nine times out of 100, within seconds he would be talking to anyone from the duty sergeant upwards and would have the details. Because they all knew ‘JB’. It was his job to know them and it was their job to know him; it was his job to get the story and it was their job to make sure that the public whom they served knew what was going on in their town in terms of crime.

 And then, one day, after I had left the news reporters’ world for the milder climes of the sports desk, someone invented the police press officer.

 The press officer became the fount of all knowledge; often based miles away - in the Herald’s case, more than 30 miles away in Stafford - they decided what was news and what they would tell you. There were no more personal visits, the reporter was simply another voice at the end of a phone. 

 It was authority’s way of stopping journalists from uncovering the awkward, the unpleasant, the mildly embarrassing. And as staff cuts took an ever greater toll on newspapers, who no longer had the manpower to devote to chasing good crime stories, it did the job.

 Now, of course, press officers are everywhere; every football and rugby club worth its salt has one. Their job (and I acknowledge here that I have a number of friends who are football club press officers) is to tell the story as the club want it told; to be, if you will, a sporting version of the political spin doctor; to regulate access to players and backroom staff who would, less than 15 years ago, meet journalists after hours in the local pub and give them tips for stories.

 I mention all this because I have been listening this week with increasing irritation to the Leveson inquiry getting het up about ‘journalists bypassing the press offices and talking to police officers,’ in pursuit of a good story. 

 As someone has said to me today: ‘most of the police press offices were pretty clueless and didn’t actually know anything.’

 Which is why any good journalist, from ‘JB’ to Neil Wallis, Graham Dudman and Fergus Shanahan, would ignore them and go to the proper coppers.

One more thing.... on occasion, ‘JB’ would meet the senior coppers on our patch and have a drink and a meal with them. I don’t know for sure, but it’s not inconceivable that at Christmas, a bottle of something warming and Scottish may have changed hands.

 Is that corruption? Is police officers telling journalists something the public ought to know but which their bosses would rather keep quiet ‘leaking’?

 Many years ago, I heard this definition of a good news story: ‘Something which someone, somewhere, would rather the public didn’t find out about.’

 I do hope someone acquaints Mr Justice Leveson with that. 

Muffy and me - a cat's tale

Whenever I am asked whether I miss office life, I always say that I don’t miss the office, I miss the people.

 I’ve spent two years and two months running my own business out of the spare bedroom at Warrillow Towers. I’ve looked at renting an office, or at least a desk in one, but it’s not easy to find and what space is available is expensive for what you get.

 There’s almost nothing in Tamworth so when someone for whom I have done some PR work offered me a desk in an office just over 20 miles away in Solihull, I decided to take a look.

 The office was good, the desk five times bigger than the one on which my computer rests as I craft this post; but weekly travel and parking costs would almost double the amount I was spending on the desk. So, it was back to the drawing board and this tiny desk.

 At least I know I’m not alone; the topic of working from home cropped up at a networking event this week and one of my fellow delegates, a solicitor, revealed that his daily companion was the family dog.

 Mine is the family cat, Muffin. A giant half-Maine Coon, who is 2ft 6ins long from nose to tail when sprawled across the bed behind my desk, he came to Warrillow Towers on the rebound, as it were.

 In the autumn of 2007, Mrs W and I lost our much-loved cat, Kylie; You can tell how old she was (roughly 18) because she was named after the Aussie pop moppet when she was still starring in Neighbours in about 1989. I was living the bachelor life in a dismal one-bedroom flat when she (the cat, not the Aussie..) came into my life.

 It was around this time of year - I recall I was watching a Five Nations rugby match on television. I had the front door open, as I often did in the hope that someone, anyone, would visit and break the dreariness of my weekend existence.

 I was in the kitchen making a cup of coffee when I heard a plaintive ‘miaow’ behind me. My visitor was a tiny little brown-and-white tabby. She belonged to my neighbour who was, to be frank, a bit of a reprobate. She hopped on to my bed, made herself comfortable - and was still in my life almost two decades later.

 Not long after, the reprobate was evicted for not paying his rent and left her behind.

Muffy ponders his next move on
 the chessboard - clearly an intelligent cat! 

 Mrs W (then Miss G) and I had been seeing each other for about 18 months at the time and, as committed animal lovers, were determined that the cat would not be left alone. I took her in to my bedsit, we took her to the vet, had her checked over and she soon became part of the family, moving in with us when we married in July 1990.

 She had quite a life, getting stuck in the roof of the half-built apartment block next to our flat, regularly vanishing into the yard of the Co-Op dairy down the road, losing the sight in one eye after a disagreement with a car, yet still being lively and active well into her second decade.

 When she went to the vets in autumn 2007 for a routine procedure and never came home, we were devastated. We thought we would cope but the winter of 2007-8 was just too quiet at Warrillow Towers so, in the following spring, we decided to look for another cat.

 A workmate of Mrs W’s worked voluntarily for a cat-rehoming charity and quickly came up with Muffin. His owner lived 12 miles away and was having to give him up due to an allergy to cats. We visited one night and fell in love with him.

 We like to think he fell in love with us; we call him the noisiest cat on the planet for his boisterous ‘miaow’ and a yelp which often sounds more like a dog’s bark than a cat expressing his feelings. 

 He’s not supposed to lie on the bed behind me as I work; Mrs W gets irritated by all the cat hair on the duvet cover. So I keep the ‘office’ door open and cast regular glances to my right as he snores on his bed on the landing. But I’m always alive to the sound of him stirring himself awake, stretching those giant limbs as he yawns himself into life, comes and rubs against my leg and then leaps onto the bed.  

 When my mobile rings, it’s not unusual for the caller to inquire ‘What’s that noise in the background?’ as Muffy (as we now know him) shouts to make himself heard in the conversation.

 It’s not quite the same as having what the Americans call ‘water cooler conversations’ with your colleagues but when I do get up to make a cuppa, Muffy chases me excitedly down the stairs.

 Would I go back to work in a big office environment? Emphatically not, for all sorts of reasons - not the least of which is that I don’t think I would find a company who would let my cat sit behind my desk all day.