111 Places In Windsor That You Shouldn't Miss – available now!

Last week was a fantastic milestone as I launched my first ever book, 111 Places In Windsor That You Shouldn’t Miss, published by Emons Verlag and available now worldwide (RRP £13.99).

Part of the best-selling guidebook series 111 Places, the book is designed to show visitors and locals around some of the more intrepid, off-the-beaten-track destinations in Windsor. It is intended to appeal just as much as to adventurous tourists as it is to people who have lived in the town for decades.

I grew up between Bracknell and Ascot, so Windsor is a destination I am very familiar with. What I didn’t realise until recently is that it is actually the most-visited destination in the UK, when internal tourism is taken into account. That’s thanks to having Windsor Great Park, which attracted some 5.6 million people in 2022 – the second-placed Natural History Museum drew just 4.6 million in comparison.

However, these statistics also reveal the challenge concerning tourism in Windsor, which is that footfall tends to be ushered towards Windsor’s main attractions. These are the Great Park and the Long Walk, Legoland Windsor and of course Windsor Castle, which, again, is by far the most-visited Royal household in the UK. This is not synonymous with the town I know. As a local (I live in Bracknell now), Windsor to me represents an up-and-coming modern market town, full of craft beer breweries and independent shops and cafés, plucky enterprises and busy local history associations. Beyond the Castle walls, Windsor is a thriving place, home to 35,000 people, many of whom are innovative entrepreneurs, incredible artists, dedicated local historians and custodians for the town.

So, there was a strong precedent for producing a new guidebook to Windsor, and especially one that intentionally left out Windsor’s so-called ‘tourist traps’. Thankfully, when I approached Emons Verlag with the idea, they were drawn to it almost immediately, and commissioned the book right away with a view to have it in shops before Christmas 2023. That meant that I had less than six months to write the book, start to finish! Not that that put me off – I’m used to writing at that kind of pace, and was frankly very excited at the prospect of the challenge.

The first thing I did was rope in my very talented friend James Riley as the photographer on the project. James and I both grew up in the area and went on to start our careers in London, before moving back to the ‘Shires’ to do those typical adult things like buy a house and, in James’s case, get married. Of course, being the internationally-renowned photographer/videographer he is, James had to work doubly hard to fit this project into his schedule, which I’m very grateful for. We weren’t helped either by the fact 2023 ended up being one of the rainiest summers in living memory.

By April, I was working on the book pretty much full-time. The process was research-intensive, and took me back to my days of writing my dissertation. There was a lot of field walking involved, and I can confirm – lest there was any doubt – that I did visit all 111 places (and many more) of the course of writing the book. The Berkshire Records Office, now known as the Royal Berkshire Archives, was a regular destination, as was the Windsor Library. There were countless emails and phone calls to local business owners, historians, and even the Royal Collection, who kindly supplied the image of the King Henry VIII Gateway to use on the front cover.

In the end, James and I delivered the book ahead of schedule, which gave us plenty of time to start preparing for the launch. The book was delayed slightly (you can thank Brexit for supply chain issues there), then brought forward again, such that by the time the book did launch in November, it took us both completely by surprise. In fact, I was only made aware of the fact the book was out by a friend who had received her copy before either of us had!

The official launch event took place on November 27 at Waterstones in Windsor. I had assumed we were going to have trouble finding a venue for the launch, but was actually surprised to find that Waterstones were more than happy to not only offer us the entire shop for an evening, they even provided four members of staff, and a table of free nibbles.

Being desperately afraid of public speaking, I enlisted the help of my good friend Chelsea Dickenson, better known as the Cheap Holiday Expert, to emcee the event. Chelsea is far more professional than either James or I when it comes to this sort of thing. The ‘cheap’ connection was also an advantage – in producing a guidebook that avoided the classic tourist traps, we had inadvertently managed to reposition Windsor as an affordable destination for a weekend break! In fact, this is how I’d chosen to position a trip to Windsor in an article for The Irish News.

The launch night was a huge success and attended by… I didn’t actually count how many people, but enough to fill the downstairs of a Waterstones at least. Chelsea kicked things off with a quiz about the book, and Windsor’s history, which was won by a young man who was visiting Windsor all the way from Australia – he later told me he intended to use the book first thing in the morning to start exploring the town.

After that we sold goodness-knows-how-many books, and James and I got to complete our personal lifetime ambitions of signing them!

One of the attendees on the night was Natasha Daniel, of the Daniel family, who own Windsor’s largest department store and one of the places mentioned in the book. She very kindly offered me a concession in the store that weekend to continue signings for local residents, and so began what I have started unironically referring to as my ‘book tour.’

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has helped by contributing to this book, who came to the launch, and who has offered kind words of feedback. It has been an incredible experience both writing and launching this book, which we hope will stand the test of time and help to re-invent tourism in Windsor.

For while we believe tourists absolutely should visit the Castle, the Long Walk and Legoland, we also hope that they will be inspired to spend a little longer in Windsor – to get off the tourist trail and down Windsor’s many fascinating back streets, where they will discover all sorts of interesting stories relating to the people, both historical and contemporary, who have made this a living, breathing, thriving town – one that we feel is fast becoming a destination in its own right.

And if you too would like to experience the more intrepid side of Windsor, pick up a copy of 111 Places In Windsor That You Shouldn’t Miss, available now in the UK and in the USA later this month.

Blast from the past: my first travel article about Bucharest, Romania

While cleaning out my hard-drive, I stumbled upon this article written all the way back in 2018 – Theresa May was Prime Minister and I had all-too-suddenly reached the age where I no longer had any idea which songs were in the charts. I had also just joined PA and, shortly after, applied to take on a side-gig as a travel journalist. In order to be accepted, I was asked to first write a short sample piece, ideally something about a past holiday or travel experience, and so I submitted this piece about Bucharest, Romania, a city unlike any I’ve visited before or since. At the time, I really didn’t know what I was doing – had no idea how to write in the travel style du jour. Truth be told, I still don’t. Anyway – here, for your enjoyment, assuming you derive enjoyment from reading Jonjo Maudsley’s from-the-vault, unreleased articles, is my first ever travel piece. I present to you…

If Dadaism and communist austerity produced a city, it would be Bucharest, Romania

“It is rare you see tourists here,” are the first words I hear in Romania.

The taxi driver is old and gruff, the ride into Bucharest swift and terrifying. There are no illuminations, not even traffic lights. It’s 9.30pm on a Friday, but the Romanian capital has already gone to sleep.

We arrive at the Hotel Sarroglia, a chimera of antique brick and modern plastic cladding, plonked in the middle of a jungle of fractured tile roofs and crumbling aggregate walls. From the top floor, you can see brutalist Bucharest sprawled out like a fog. You are never more than a 20-minute walk to the city centre, the receptionist tells me, but you are better off taking the metro, lest you find yourself lost amid the crusty concrete, the Dacia 1300s parked nose-to-tail along every road, the dusty asphalt, the signposts written in a language that is like Latin but not quite, the beggars and the street dogs and students and the monumental tricolours of red, blue and gold that float in the tailwinds of speeding traffic.

I awake the next morning to the sounds of shouting and revving, a post-Communist symphony.

At the reception, I find the same woman from last night, she hasn’t gone to bed, and I ask her, “Things to do?” Follow the guidebook, she says, plain and simple. So I do.

I start with the Arcul de Triumf, a harrumphing adage to Paris (Bucharest is often compared but rarely equated to the French capital), on the edge of Herăstrău Park where I also find a curious, isolated memorial to Michael Jackson; then to the Palace of the Parliament, the largest government building in the world and a living museum to tragic dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu whose maniacal influence still lingers over the city like a hot stench; next, the National Museum of Art, its atmosphere not dissimilar to the art department of your local comprehensive school, its collection so breathtakingly beautiful that you start to feel it belongs to Bucharest only out of irony; and finally the Carturesti Carusel, a must-see on the way into the Old Town and the best extant remnant of Bucharest’s pre-Communist past.

The sun starts to set and I retire to the Upstairs Rooftop skybar just in time to watch a 100,000-person strong anti-government march in the adjacent Piața Victoriei (there’s never any shortage of culture in Bucharest).

Food and drink are not for indulgence in Bucharest and my lack of choice reflects this: simple nutrients designed to enhance the body for late-night drinking and deep, meaningless conversations. I avoid restaurants and settle instead for street food on the Strada Covaci as I flit in and out of dark and drafty Communist-era hallways, gazing out from second-floor balconies onto the bazaars and bustling alleyways. Beer, pork, cabbage and potato – it’s all I find, but then again it’s all I need.

Everything is abstract in Bucharest. Even the pavement slabs leave me guessing. And at any moment, as I’m caught ruminating on just how weird and hip this city is, I sometimes feel the sudden, jolting realisation that I just… fit in, somehow, as if I were always destined to become a part of this futurist fresco, as if I could just exist here, forever, in the midst of it all, never standing out, living out my metaphysical Bucharest existence. Perhaps I always have been here? No, I mustn’t get carried away, must keep my British sensibility, must remember that I’m as much an oddity to these citizens as they are to me, and besides there aren’t any home comforts, heck, I can’t even find seatbelts in the taxi home. No one cares much for health and safety in Romania, but then why would they? After all, it is rare you see tourists here.

Can you do an academic Master’s degree while working part-time in a corporate job?

This is a question I wished Google had answered for me one year ago, when I embarked upon this very endeavour.

For the past 12 months, I have been working three days a week at Sticky while completing an MA in Urban History “at” the University of Leicester.

The “at” is in quotation marks because, naturally, I haven’t spent much time in Leicester over the past year. Due to the pandemic, all of my classes except a few took place online.

Furthermore, all of my learning resources were accessed online too. This included seminar reading, accessed via online journals; software, which could be downloaded; and the university library, who mailed books straight to my front door. The only thing that wasn’t online was the research material I accessed through the Berkshire Record Office in Reading, which required lots of COVID-safe planning to navigate around.

The Berkshire Record Office in lockdown. Not pictured: the hellish nightmare of organising a trip (visitors were allowed to visit once per week, for a maximum of 5 hours, so long as they booked a week in advance, and had to wear masks the entire time).

The reason I chose to study “at” Leicester was that it is the only university in the UK that offers the degree I wanted to pursue, but if I’d opted for a more generic degree, I could have chosen any university in the country, perhaps even the world, without having to attend campus.

The upshot of doing a degree remotely was that I got to stay living in London. Although I did consider moving to Leicester, a combination of the winter lockdown and the fact that I don’t really like Leicester convinced me not to do this. Being in London also meant I was closer to Bracknell, the town I focused on for my dissertation, which made it easier to access the Berkshire Record Office and Bracknell Library. Plus, of course, it meant staying closer to my work office. Having classes online also meant that I achieved a near-perfect attendance record.

The downside was that I feel like I missed out on the whole student experience. Having already done an undergraduate degree, I tried to convince myself that this was not terribly important, and besides, the quality of the teaching was not diminished by classes being online. But I will admit, after two semesters, and finding myself done in by too many online seminars, I wished that I could have hung out with some of my fellow students like I had during my undergrad. The absence of a library and other learning environments also became difficult. My living room is not the most stimulating place on earth.

All in all, the positives of having online classes outweighed the negatives, although if I were to do it again I would definitely opt to have at least a proportion of my classes in person.

Going part-time while studying

Okay, so back to the question at hand. How did I find going part-time while studying full-time? 

Let’s start with the basics about me: I am a senior editor at Sticky, a division of PA Media. This is a fast-moving editorial consultancy with about 30 members of staff and an even greater number of clients. My job is to write, produce and project manage content for Sticky’s clients, everything from articles to eBooks. The intensity of this job goes through peaks and troughs, but when it’s at its peak, I could sometimes expect (when I was full-time) to work 50+ hours per week. My level of seniority also made me highly accountable in front of clients, and I was expected to manage several of my own client relationships.

This workload only increased during the pandemic. Now that we are working from home, not only do editors work in isolation much more than we used to, we are also expected to be available for a greater number of meetings. As such, part of my agreement with Sticky was that I would make myself flexible (even on my 'days off’) to attend client meetings as and when I was needed. 

This agreement, made in August 2020, was that I would go from five days a week (40 hours) to three days a week (24 hours). My days ‘in work’ would be flexible, so that I could fit them around deadlines. Most weeks, I worked Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, since my lectures and seminars tended to fall on Tuesdays and Fridays. I had about 15 days of annual leave over the year, which I used around key essay deadlines.

Was this enough time? Well, the University of Leicester recommends that full-time MA students should dedicate at least 30 hours a week to their studies. At least is the operative word here. Most modules provide a reading list with compulsory and optional reading options, which needed to be read and annotated in advance of each week’s seminar. Compulsory reading was typically 2–4 chapters or articles, while lists of optional reading could stretch on for another 10–20 chapters.

Even the most dedicated student would have struggled to read everything on the list, and most people (I believe) stuck to the compulsory reading anyway. But there was a lot of interesting material on these reading lists, some of which I was gutted to miss out on.

Assuming each module required one lecture and four pieces of reading per week (with the lecture taking 2 hours and each article/chapter needing 3 hours to read), and considering we did two modules per semester (it would have been one module per semester if I’d done part-time), this added up to around 28 hours of reading and lecture time per week. So, the University’s estimates were fairly accurate.

Thus, I found myself working a total of around 54 hours a week. This wasn’t so bad when you take into account the fact I am used to working long hours in my job anyway, plus the fact I had nothing else to do during lockdown. It was actually quite nice to finish work on a Monday, then spend a few hours reading some history passages. But I do wonder whether I would have been able to do this had I not been in lockdown. I was on fine enough margins as it was – adding in factors like a commute might have tipped me over the edge.

In the end, my typical weekly routine went something like this (each module represents roughly four hours):

	Morning	Afternoon	Evening
Monday	Work	Work	Uni work
Tuesday	Uni work	Lecture	Uni work
Wednesday	Work	Work	Uni work
Thursday	Work	Work	Spanish class
Friday	Lecture	Time off	Time off
Saturday	Uni work	Time off	Time off
Sunday	Uni work	Uni work	Time off

As you can see, so long as I squeezed in a bit of work in the evenings and weekends, I was perfectly able to keep up with my university work, and even found time for my weekly Spanish lesson, a few beers on a Friday night and a cycle ride on Saturday. During periods of higher pressure – such as when I had an essay to work on – I may have ended up working Saturdays and Sundays too.

What about the dissertation?

My degree required a dissertation of 15,000 words, to be written between May and September 2021. My first thought when I saw this was: “Five months to write 15,000 words? I write that every week! This will be a doss.” Haha. I was so young and naïve…

For it is not the writing itself that is so time-consuming, but the research. For my dissertation, I needed to complete the following:

• A 20-minute oral presentation (worth 10% of the final grade) outlining my research questions, which required a Powerpoint presentation plus a Q&A, delivered to the faculty in May.

• Interviews with no fewer than 10 people. This also required a submission to the board of ethics to conduct research on human participants, a period of recruitment, time to host all of the interviews, and time to write up the transcripts.

• Notes on over 30 reports from the Berkshire Record Office. These were not digitised, meaning I needed to visit the BRO once per week in order to make handwritten notes.

• Reading the entire historiography of the new town movement, which meant both tracking down the books I needed (some in libraries, some on Amazon) and, of course, reading and making notes on them. By the end, I had read about 30 books and reports.

Only then did I get to the writing phase. This required no fewer than three drafts, with each stage requiring fairly substantial re-writes. The irony is that 15,000 words was actually too few in the end. When you’ve spent months reading and researching a topic, you come to the writing stage with a lot to say. But, by the end of the first or second draft, you realise that most of it is not adding to your argument and needs to go. Writing a dissertation was easier than I thought it would be; editing the damn thing was the most substantial task (and that’s coming from a professional editor). And hey, don’t get me started on footnotes and formatting…

Spending a year in lockdown does not make for good slice-of-life content. This is, sadly, about as aesthetic as studying got.

Ultimately, the dissertation was, without a doubt, the most intense stage of the degree. It required me to be constantly switched on. What’s next on my reading list? Have I typed up that interview? Have I made a connection between that obscure source in chapter 2 and that conclusion in chapter 4? Could I have missed that one ‘smoking gun’ journal article that could blow my discussion wide open? During the last few months, almost every spare minute I had in the day was dedicated to my dissertation. It was at this stage that I started to forego social events and Spanish lessons in order to keep up with the rigorous workload.

Which leads me onto my next point. What did all of this juggling and pressure do to me, mentally?

The big challenge: mental workloads

If only my life had looked anything like the schedule above, I think everything would have been fine. Sadly, it didn’t, because the one thing I didn’t take into account was creep factor. By this I mean, work creeping into my university life, and vice versa.

It could be hard (nay even impossible) to get to 5.30pm after a stressful day at work, then simply down tools and dive head-first into a complex journal text about how neo-gothic architecture helped the British to consolidate the legitimacy of their regime in India, or something like that. My mind doesn’t switch tracks that fast.

About halfway through the second semester – which, coincidentally, was also three months into the intense winter lockdown – I encountered burnout like never before. My job was relentless. So too was my degree. The oppressive darkness of late February, the constant cycle of online meetings, the same lap I would walk around the park every day… it all got a bit too much.

The University of Leicester was quite humble about the fact students were under a lot of pressure during lockdown. Unlike my alma mater (Manchester), which seemed to demand higher and higher excellence at any cost, Leicester was quite happy to let students learn at their own pace. Feedback on essays was honest and forthcoming and help with assignments was easy to reach. As a case in point, when I experienced technical difficulties during a module that involved using geospatial mapping software, the lecturer was very happy to offer me a one-to-one catch-up class after hours. That kind of service really made a huge difference.

Lectures were also recorded, so if I couldn’t make the exact time for whatever reason, I could catch up in my own time. I only needed to do this once, but it was a great option to have.

In the end, I couldn’t fault the pace of learning nor the quality of teaching. The same could not be said, I’m afraid, of Sticky.

Yes, despite the lockdown, the wheels of capitalism kept a’turnin’, and Sticky got busier than ever. That meant greater responsibility, which meant more work, which meant overtime, which meant lots and lots of stress.

I am afraid the situation was not helped by some uncommunicative clients and colleagues who often waited until I was well into my designated working hours to send briefs. The difference between sending me a brief at 9am on a Monday versus 1pm is that it gave me four fewer hours to get stuff done – or, meant that I had to work four hours overtime.

Ultimately, it was not the university’s fault my workload got too much. In my budget of workable hours each week, all university work was accounted for. No, instead, it was work. And therein lies the problem with doing a Master’s degree while working a corporate job: the expectation that you will give yourself, heart and soul, to the demands of your workplace are still there. Your personal passion for academia means very little to your clients, or to your boss, or to your team members. They still expect you to be there, and to be ready, when the situation calls for you.

Was it worth it?

But anyway. Here I am at the end, and this is the question that looms over everything. Did I make the right choice?

My answer is an emphatic yes. Spending a year pursuing my own interests has been ambrosia for my soul. Taking time away from the pressure of copywriting (well, not fully away), especially in the midst of the pandemic, has helped me to keep a sense of perspective over my life. I’ve produced some good copy this year, but I am far prouder of the essays I’ve written for my MA.

Has it improved my job prospects? Maybe, but I haven’t figured that out yet. I’ve returned to full-time work at the same level I was at before. I’ve found no extra freelance clients as a direct result of my studies.  I have definitely improved my writing and research skills (I got a Distinction in my writing and research module), which has undoubtedly made me a better copywriter… but I haven’t learned anything I didn’t already know about web technologies, SEO, direct response, or any of the other stuff my clients need and want from me.

But that doesn’t matter, because the greatest benefit I’ve derived from completing this degree is the sense of satisfaction. It was a year of my life that I managed to fill with purpose and meaning beyond the narrow purview of my career (which hasn’t suffered a jot).

If you have come to this blog post seeking justification for pursuing your own full-time Master’s degree while working part-time, you may also struggle with the same self-criticism I levied on myself a year ago. That it’s self-indulgent, will have no benefits, or that it’s a waste of money. With the power of hindsight, I can now say… these are all absolutely true. Doing a Master’s, especially in an academic subject like I did, is an exercise in self-fulfilment. If you approach it as anything but, prepare for disappointment.

So then, why do it? Because maybe, between the torment of lockdown, the anxiety passed down by your parents, the ever-increasing expectations of the corporate world, and your own fickle lust for life, you – like I did – need this. Maybe it’s a chance to go back and continue reading from the book of life you put down several years ago? Maybe it’s a chance to expand your cultural or career horizons in order to force a new career path? Maybe it’s just something to add to your Hinge profile, I ain’t judging.

In conclusion, doing a Master’s while working part-time in a corporate job is definitely possible and I, personally, would recommend it. Although, if I were to try it again, I would like to try studying part-time while continuing to work full-time, just to see how the two methods compared.

Great – more luxury properties not intended for young Bracknellians (A letter to the Bracknell News)

(This is a letter I submitted to the Bracknell News in 2019 that was probably considered too ‘hot’ to publish – it seems the new editorship of the News is more concerned with recycling press releases for the benefit of property developers, than representing the voices of local people and tackling the hard-hitting issues of the day. More power to them.)

Another week, another soulless property development in Bracknell.

This time it’s The Grand Exchange, which proudly calls itself a ‘Game Changer’.

What game are they referring to, I wonder? Perhaps the game in which anonymous investment firms plonk gaudy concrete blocks covered with plastic cladding in the middle of our town and market them as ‘luxury’?

Or is the game that forces buyers to front an insane £54,990 deposit for a one-bedroom flat?

Because if it is, I hate to break it to Mayfair-based property investment firm SevenCapital: you ain’t changing nothing.

But they have given their ‘game’ away in a sponsored article for Homes&Property, saying that The Grand Exchange buyers can expect a ‘healthy rental yield’.

Ahh. So, these so-called ‘luxury’ flats (they use that word eight times on their website) are not intended for aspirational Bracknellians looking to buy a property in their hometown after all.

Instead it seems they are exclusively for wealthy, far-off investors wanting to supplement their income and build capital with a buy-to-let property in a town that has experienced ‘property price growth of 249% in the last 20 years’ (again, reading from the website). 

Call me cynical if you like. But if you really gave a hoot about the character of a town, would you use phrases like ‘prime investment hotspot’ and ‘emerging market attracting world-class commercial occupiers’?

I refer back to my previous letter that our Member of Parliament, Dr Phillip Lee, was kind enough to share on Facebook: why not call Bracknell a wonderful place to live?

Perhaps because we are finally resolved to the fact that housing in Bracknell is no longer designed for the people who want to live here, but for investment firms looking to store their money in real estate.

A round-up of recent projects

2020 has kicked off with an incredible bang. I don’t think we’ve ever been so busy at Sticky Content.

I’m completely in the dark as to what may have caused this sudden surge in work. I have a feeling it has something to do with Brexit – the end of that three-year-long period of uncertainty has encouraged businesses and publications to open their purses.

Having said that, in terms of uncertainty, we have only gone from the frying pan to the fire. The rest of this year will make or break our deal with the rest of Europe and the world. Early forecasts aren’t great. It seems we could lose a lot of skilled and unskilled workers, which would affect many of my clients. Also, new tax regulations could damage our working relationship with European businesses. As with all things Brexit, I am pessimistic, but we shall have to wait and see, won’t we?

Of course, it may not be entirely down to Brexit. This time of year is always busy, with businesses making a mad sprint to finish the tax year on a high. 2019 was a year of moderate spending, which I believe has put some companies behind their forecasts. There is ground to be made up in 2020 and, thankfully, more and more of my clients are starting to see the benefits that content and communications can bring.

(Positive) changes to my freelancing schedule

Let’s start with the bad news: unfortunately, I have had to cancel my holiday to Japan. I was due to travel at the end of March, flying with Air China via Beijing. The spread of the Coronavirus through Asia has stunted those plans.

There is an upside to this story, however, which is that I have given myself more time to take on freelance work in the first half of 2020. This should give me more than enough time to help out any businesses or publications struggling to fill their quota of content. Don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you need any kind of support.

I’m officially level A2 in Spanish

Arriba! I’m continuing to push ahead with my language learning. I can’t recommend International House in London enough. The quality of their teaching material, not to mention the teachers themselves, is amazing. Learning a language has so far been one of the most positive experiences of my life – however, I am beginning to approach ‘the wall’. I’ll continue to push forward, but if anyone has any useful tricks and tips – anything to give me a change of scenery – I’d love to hear them.

And now, for some of my recent work…

It was a busy end to 2019, wrapping up a few huge projects.

On the travel side of things, I produced two new articles.

The first was a tale of my experience of the Christmas markets in Krakow, Poland. This was a real whistle-stop tour – just two nights in Poland’s crown jewel of culture. But the people I met and the places I saw kept me very busy for those two days and contributed, I think, to a very nice article.

Even though it was released quite close to Christmas, it gained decent traction. In Ireland, it was picked up by RTE and the Irish News, while in Northern Ireland it appeared in the Belfast Telegraph. It was popular in Scotland, featuring in the Press & Journal (Inverness) and the Daily Record (Glasgow). In the rest of the UK, it made it onto the TalkTalk blog, plus the Lancashire Evening Post.

Next up was my visit to Serbia. This actually took place earlier in the year but it took my editor and I a little longer to decide on the theme of the article after some, err, confusion. This was a story in itself but, not wanting to burn bridges, I’ve decided to save it for my book!

Nonetheless, Serbia was a fun trip that ended with a great night of partying in Belgrade, a place I would happily return to. Along with Bulgaria and Romania, I have had nothing but positive and extraordinary experiences in the Balkans and hope to see more of this part of the world soon.

While it was only a short piece, it got picked up by several publications. Online, it’s on the TalkTalk blog. I’ve seen it in three magazines: Yorkshire Post Magazine, Life Magazine and Times of Tunbridge Wells. In the papers, it was picked in many major cities. I’ve clocked it in the Hayes & Harlington Gazette, Harefield Gazette, Hull Daily Mail, Birmingham Post, Grimsby Telegraph, South Wales Echo, Derby Telegraph, Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette, The Chronicle (Newcastle), Leicester Mercury, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Liverpool Echo, Manchester Evening News and Bournemouth Echo. In Scotland, it appeared in the Evening Times (Glasgow) and The Herald Magazine.

By the way, I’ve just filed copy for another recent trip which I’m sure will be popular. The journey itself was fairly life-changing – as always, 1,200 words were nowhere near enough to do it any justice.

In terms of other work, here’s a brief summary of my recent goings-on:

• I created the first tone of voice for a major British charity. I hope to include this project in my portfolio soon, but right now it’s still not officially signed off!

• I edited the latest issue of a client’s trade-press newspaper and wrote several of the stories. Still waiting for it to go to print, but the mock-ups looked amazing

• Some more fantastic and well-received articles from one of my favourite clients in the human resources sector – always an interesting challenge

• Apart from that, lots of pitches, including one (ongoing) for one of my oldest and dearest clients

That’s all for now.

Oh, but before you go, I will hint at one more thing – a personal project is slowly gaining a bit of momentum. If all goes according to plan this year, I could see the start of something quite exciting! I’m looking for great writers, photographers and designers who are interested in taking on some unpaid (for now) work in return for a stake of the business, so if you’re looking for your next big opportunity please get in contact.

Till next time!

Jonjo

10 great blog ideas for small businesses

Once again, I have a new blog up on the Sticky Content blog.

Wow, it’s been a busy few months. I know how hypocritical it is of me to write a blog post about the importance of posting regularly, and then proceed to not post regularly. But seriously, what an end to 2019/start to 2020 it has been!

I’ve been away three times over the last month, to Poland, then Austria and most recently to Vietnam and Cambodia. My next mission will be to update my portfolio with some of my recent travel journals. In the meantime, I have added a couple of new pieces to my portfolio.

That includes my piece published in The Modernist last year, titled The New New Town.

I’ve also completed over 100 hours of Spanish practice. Estoy mejorando. Pero esta ir un largo camino.

Plenty more to come, as soon as I find the time to write. For now, let me quietly and quickly drop my latest blog post here, and hope that you have time to read it.

Lovingly, Jonjo.

I have a new post up on the Sticky Content blog…

And it’s about SEO.

I’ve been neglecting my SEO a bit recently while I’ve focused on my copywriting, so I was proper chuffed to make it back to BrightonSEO last month.

Boy how it’s changed!

I went to my first BrightonSEO in 2014, shortly after joining iCrossing. Back then, the venue was the Brighton Dome, which seems teeny-tiny in comparison to the gigantic Brighton Centre. There was one room of stalls, one stage, and the presentations were just thinly-veiled sales pitches for new and expensive tools.

Now in 2019, the event is more like a University Freshers’ Fair than a marketing conference, with giant screens and booming sound-systems, celebrity speakers giving motivational speeches and cool bars with retro arcades – and, in true Brighton style, yards of IPA taps.

But the biggest and best difference was that the quality of the speakers had increased exponentially. Unlike five years ago, there was much less emphasis on shifting products. Now it seemed like the speakers had been chosen for the quality of their insights and expertise.

Admittedly, some of the sessions were a bit basic for my tastes – the new target audiences for BrightonSEO are entry-level executives and small business owners. But there were still some eye-opening sessions for veterans.

I particularly enjoyed Dixon Jones’ exploration and explanation of how PageRank really works and Luci Wood’s thorough and insightful introduction to Google Discover. Go check them out.

And off the back of it, I decided to write an article which you can read here.

Funnily enough, the week after BrightonSEO, one of my enterprise-level clients asked a question to the tune of, “so, exactly how much content should we delete?”

I was like, whoa hol’ up.

Weirdly, I think the question of deleting content is common among my larger clients. Many of them seem to believe that deleting old content is not only simple but effective, but an inevitable stage in every piece of content’s lifespan.

And it’s not just the big boys who suffer from itchy trigger fingers – deleting content is just as popular (and as horribly detrimental) with small biz websites and blogs, too.

So no matter who you are and how much content you produce, hopefully the article will be of some use to you. Writing it took me back to many of my favourite SEO resources, like Search Engine Watch and SERoundtable, and I even got back in touch with some long-neglected buddies in the industry. It’s good to know my knowledge in the sector hasn’t dropped off too much, despite the time I’ve been out of the industry – I think, now that my copywriting is at a decent level, I will start to focus a bit more on my search skills.

So, if you know of a good refresher course or a way to get up to speed quickly, I’d love to hear it.

In the meantime, here’s another link to my article: have a read and let me know what you think.

And if you find it useful, don’t forget to share.

My website launches, and some thoughts about writing

… my website is officially live.

I’ve chosen a URL that reflects both my ambition to become my own personal brand, and that is memorable enough to be shared without business cards. It is:

www.jonjo.london

I was having a chat with a friend the other day. He warned me to keep the blog content coming, lest I would wind up with a blog that made my website appear ‘dead’.

As we all know, coming up with blog ideas is hard. I write blogs for a living, and yet I find half the work is in the planning, concepting and strategy side. Writing the actual copy is the easy part.

Some of my clients think I’m mad when I tell them to just get stuck in and write whatever comes to mind. I have been known to give advice such as “treat your blog like your personal diary” and “even if you’re only writing 50 words about the news of the day, just get something out there.”

Many businesses, especially big corporations, ignore this advice. They think it will:

• Damage their brand value

• Make their experts appear unprofessional

• Compete for attention with higher-quality content

I often don’t have the guts to tell them they’re wrong.

You can’t be a thought leader if you don’t have thoughts

This is a line I once delivered to a potential client in a pitch. Their C-suite team nodded their heads and took turns telling me the ideas they’d had bottled away for far too long.

Many of the thoughts they shared with me went beyond the routine-driven content they had been putting on their blog up to that point. Their thoughts were unique, abstract, intriguing, conceptual, even philosophical.

They were the kind of thoughts I would have wanted to read. They were the kind of thoughts you would have wanted to read. They were the kind of thoughts their competitors would have wanted to read.

I offered to turn each of their incredible thoughts into a blog post. “By the end of next week, we could have your blog full of these incredible ideas!” I said.

They grinned, told me how excited they were, then shook our hands as we walked out the door.

We got a call the next day to tell us they’d chosen the other agency.

Three years on their blog is full of the same SEO-bait rubbish they were putting up before. And I still don’t think anyone in their industry are calling them ‘thought leaders’.

C’est la vie.

Practice what you preach

With this blog, I want to demonstrate my personal philosophy when it comes to writing.

It’s something I call Just Write, Just Wrong.

When I was starting out as a writer, I asked my first mentor what was the best way to learn how to become an excellent writer. Which books should I read? Which courses should I take? Which editors should I work with?

He told me to forget all that, and instead focus on doing one thing: “Just write.”

When a thought comes to mind, just write. When you develop writer’s block, just write. When you make a career-ending mistake, when you receive criticism that shreds your heart to pieces, and when you start to think no one is reading what you’re writing: just write.

You don’t have to publish everything, he said – especially if it’s just wrong. But you still have to write.

I can’t tell you the number of opening paragraphs, first drafts and files marked “PERSONAL” I have saved on my hard drive.

It’s all practice. It’s all there to keep my writing muscles limber.

Great writing is a form of athletics

This leads me on to another excellent piece of advice I once received. As a writer, try to treat yourself like an athlete.

In other words, make sure you are getting regular, intense training. That means not only reading, studying and practicing, but living your life in a way that facilitates your ability to write.

This is what I try to do. Wherever I go, I carry a journal. I make studies of people, buildings, objects or even concepts. I try to utilise new words in order to grow my vocabulary.

I also study foreign languages. At the moment, I’m learning Spanish. Learning about the development of languages from a foreign perspective helps me to understand not only how language has evolved, but how the brain processes it.

And most importantly of all, I talk to people. I love talking. Someone recently said I have the “gift of the gab”. I’ve never felt so flattered. Talking is so important as a writer. When you talk to people, you open up neural pathways that would have previously been beyond your imagination. The best ideas, the greatest stories, the funniest humour, the most exciting revelations are all borne out of conversation.

If you are a part-time writer – for instance, a businessperson with a blog – you probably won’t have the time to sit and pontificate about the nature of language as often or for as long as I do. But if you are interested in developing your own writing skills, try taking inspiration from the athletes:

• Use your spare time to “Just Write”. Even if it’s not your best work, even if it’ll never get published, it’s still practice

• Read a variety of works – don’t just stick to one genre or your favourite author – and especially make sure to read the classics

• Understand that our world is built on language and storytelling, and try to look at everything in your life from this perspective

And if you’re having trouble writing a good blog…

… bear in mind that I wrote this blog post in 40 minutes just using some of the thoughts I’d had stored away in my head for a while.

Don’t pressure yourself into writing the next Shakespeare every time you sit down to write for your blog or website. Instead, let the words come naturally. You don’t need to strive to be a thought leader, if you believe you already are one – instead, you just need to get those thoughts out there.

Alternatively, you can always hire a writing athlete like me.

Thanks for reading. And tell your friends about jonjo.london!