Tag: Black Country

I have domiciled in the Black Country now for sixteen years. It’s weird as that’s longer than I was at school and yet it still feels so fresh and new. In fact, I was at a school reunion last weekend and it was excellent seeing everyone in adulthood as I have not seen any of them after the day I ended school. I’m very skilled about being naughty at losing contact with people and not being in touch. I appear to find that I think ‘I wonder how so and so is’ and suddenly grasp that I haven’t spoken to them in 5 years and feel too guilty to pick up the phone. Thank heavens for social networking!

I moved up here at first when I began contracting when I was employed by IBM on a project for the Midlands Electricity Board which was enormous fun. Since then my work has taken a lot of changes in both job and region, but now I am in command of a business that offers SEO and IT support services to small companies in the Black Country area and the greater West Midlands. It means that I am able to work at home which is really the only place I’ve ever wanted to work. I have been fortunate enough that business has let me to travel to other places and I have been to Brentwood, Coventry, Newcastle upon Tyne and, most gloriously, Canberra before an all too concise return to the North East.

But I love being in the Black Country and driving out and discovering it. It really is extraordinarily beautiful, rather like my beloved Surrey, but different naturally in that we are slap in the centre of the Industrial Revolution. We need not have to move far to be surrounded by the remains of history. This section of the Black Country was regarded for chain and glass manufacture. The chains and anchors for the Titanic were created here and the transport of them to the railway was recently re-enacted for a Channel 4 documentary. There are also canals wherever you go relating the coal, iron and steel industrial areas to the wider world.

The majority of it has now faded of course, although bespoke metal bashing and steel product companies still work. The current Black Country now turns around small industrial businesses, high end services and some dependence on the motor industry which is still strong in the West Midlands with Jaguar Land Rover, and Rover also making a low level return.

For myself, I am more than happy now working for myself, using the abilities that I’ve picked up in my working life and using them on my own terms. I learnt how to do IT support many years ago when I was employed by British Gas and took a break from programming to have a go at something new, and that has dwelled with me through the period where I have been able to repair problems for teams I was working with quickly and without the need to call out the support teams. SEO I have picked up in later life and have found that it is completely suited to the way I prefer to work and have always had an ambition to do as I have always adored creative writing.

So for the foreseeable future, I will keep my focus on SEO with a smidgen IT support as and when necessary.

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I was feeling a bit green yesterday. Not quite the complete ticket, a little wobbly in the person as it were. So in the afternoon I repaired to my bed and grabbed some sleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up I was lots better, fresh and revived and got back to work. Which was all simple to do as I work at home and for myself so I gave myself permission, resumed work providing superior SEO and IT support services to companies in and around the Black Country.

It’s a definite advantage that the home-worker has. If I was located in an office somewhere I would have either had to attempt to battle my way through the day feeling lousy and very probably gradually getting worse, or make up my mind to jack in the day, make my apologies and go home without the prospect of coming back and carrying on where I left it. Plus I’d have the annoyance of having to submit forms, maybe have to endure a ‘back to work talk’ as I really need my intelligence insulted as a penance for feeling unwell. But, in doing SEO work I can just save my work, take refuge under the covers, grab a quality snooze and when I woke up again, cross the landing to the study and continue.

It would have been different if I had been on an IT support call of course, although the choice would have been to complete the call I was on and then either opt to put off any further appointments or break for a breath of air or a nap in the car and then carrying on. It would also depend on the location in the Black Country I was of course, if I was near to home I could always scurry back for my nap and let outstanding appointments know that I was going to be held up, though of course if there was a drastic emergency situation somewhere then naturally I would have to be really unwell to let them down.

It is of course the eternal quandary of the contractor. No work, no pay and if you let clients down then they will always have the chance to find someone else that they may consider to be more reliable, that’s everyday business sense.

So, whether working to enhance someone’s website with SEO, or keeping their systems and machinery running by giving IT support, feeling queasy doesn’t need to stop me supporting my customers’ business, which being office bound probably would, which is for the best.

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