Meeting the champion of Hull's year as the city of culture
Published: Wed, 10/18/17
I moved back with Venetia to the East Riding in the middle of Hull’s year as the UK’s city of culture. Beverley is also holding its own literary festival too. So, last night Venetia and I went to the theatre where the journalist and writer Rosie Millard was being interviewed about her role as Chair of the City of Culture management board. Ms Millard was also talking about her life and work and plugging her new book. Rosie Millard has been a pretty prolific writer over the past 20 years and I have read her often enough to want to know if she is as engaging in person as on the page. We were not disappointed and we had an entertaining 90 minutes or so.
Rosie must have been at Hull University about the same time as I was living in the area previously. (Like me she had been raised in London and found Hull to be an intriguing contrast to the capital city.) Her first published article championed her university city. Throughout her career she has spoken up for Hull whenever the opportunity arose. So, when the selection process for deciding on the next city of culture came about Ms Millard was invited to present the case for Hull. This led to her being asked to be the Chair of the City of Culture and her pride and enthusiasm for the project was clear as she talked about her involvement.
Rosie also talked about working in the dying industry of printed news papers. The internet has had a similar effect on the printed media that Gutenberg’s press had on the demand for the services of scribes with quill pens and parchment over 500 years ago. Apparently she recently had six regular writing contracts with various news papers and magazines. Then, in one year she lost them all as each outlet ceased publication or at least massively scaled back. However, Rosie is certainly not someone who is unwilling to adapt to circumstances and she has moved into novel writing. Her second work of fiction is apparently inspired by a horrific sounding ‘reality’ game show she participated in a few years back. A pretty good example of using even life’s less wonderful experiences as material for entertaining others.
The best takeaway for me from the talk? Be goal orientated, as in ‘write 1000 words a day until you reach 80,000 words then write ‘the end’. Okay, writing a book isn’t quite that simple but it is a good start. The main thing is, get out there, do what you are best at with a passion and life will be interesting and full of purpose.
Now that I am able to concentrate on promoting Stav training I have realised that I have five main goals to accomplish in the next couple of weeks. I made a lot of progress with the first one yesterday, Ivar and I have agree the date for next year’s Stavcamp, mid September 2018 and we will hold it here in Beverley, our own little house and garden of Stav culture if you like. So, if you would like to come you can see the rest of the details at http://www.stavcamp.org .
I am also getting excited about a project which will be a very interesting opportunity for serious martial artists. I have to sort out a few more details before I can announce it fully but it is going to be good. More on the other plans soon.
regards
Graham
PS In the meantime there are two more courses between now and the end of the year and I will do a CQC seminar in January. Full details at http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/train.html