Thursday, January 15, 2009

Hello blogosphere



Today is the first day of the rest of your life. So the saying goes.

I was made redundant yesterday. I don't know what this means with regards the rest of my life.

In my heart of hearts I knew it was coming, but that didn't lessen the blow of receiving the dreaded call from the basement meeting rooms.

"Hello Barry, it's Emma Chaff from human resources."
"Hello Emma."
"Barry, can you come down to the basement meeting room please?"

Descending the steps into the office basement, cold sweat beading on my brow, I suddenly knew how Peter Anthony Allen must have felt as he climbed up the stairs of Walton Prison's gallows.

What followed was standard fair in these times of economic turmoil. The credit crunch has come home to roost, my glittering career in media sales was over. My legs went wobbly, my mouth dried up and a tear trickled down my cheek.

I was out of job.

A washed up dinosaur.

The internet is the future, I was told and I'll freely admit it's not one of my strong points. To be honest, I thought the internet was a flash in the pan, people will always want good old fashioned Hard Copy I'd always said. Maybe I was wrong all along

I might have been wrong, but I'm big enough to admit it. If the internet is the future, I would need to get up to speed. I went to PC World this morning and invested some of my redundancy package in an Apple Macintosh iBook.

I've been setting the damn thing up all day, and now I've set up this blog. With 15 years' media sales under my belt, I've decided to cross over the divide and become a journalist. How hard can it be?

You can't keep a good man down.

3 comments:

  1. Interesting start to your blogging debut and the start of your journalistic career, Barry. Hope it goes well for you and you NEVER ever have another redundancy. I've had five and it hurts. I'm writing this comment as I am preparing your Sunday Roast which I am enjoying. Cheers ~ Eddie

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  2. Hello Barry, I enjoyed your Roast tremendously, like I had always enjoyed your posts. I can't remember how and why I stopped coming back, could be I thought you stopped blogging, whatever it was, my fault.

    How is your iBook doing? Are iBooks predecessor of the MacBooks?

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  3. I enjoyed your roast immensely, so have come by to leave a comment. I am redundant only in the sense of constantly repeating myself, so I don't know your pain. However, I'll pretend I do - OUCH! - and better you than me.

    No, seriously, nice stuff here, and I've enjoyed the few I've thus far read. Best for future!

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