I have domiciled in the Black Country now for 16 years. It’s funny as that is longer than I was at school and yet it continues to feel so fresh and new. In fact, I was at a school reunion last weekend and it was strange seeing everybody grown up as I have not seen any of them from the day I completed school. I’m very good about being naughty at dropping contact with people and not keeping in touch. I appear to find that I think ‘I wonder how so and so is’ and suddenly comprehend that you have not spoken to them in 5 years and feel too guilty to pick up the phone. Thank the Lord for social networking!
I came up here originally when I began freelancing when I was contracted to IBM on a job for the Midlands Electricity Board which was enormous fun. Since then my work has taken a lot of alterations in both job and geography, but these days I am in command of a business that offers SEO and IT support services to small companies in the Black Country area and the larger West Midlands. It means that I get work at home which is in reality the only place I’ve ever wanted to work. I have been lucky enough that freelancing has let me to go to other places and I have been to Brentwood, Coventry, Newcastle upon Tyne and, most exotically, Canberra before an all too brief return to the North East.
But I adore being in the Black Country and being out and looking around it. It really is very beautiful, and reminds me of my beloved Surrey, but different of course in that we are set in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. We do not have to move far to be surrounded by the signs of the past. This part of the Black Country was renowned for chain and glass construction. The chains and anchors for the Titanic were made here and the transport of them to the railway was recently re-enacted for a Channel 4 documentary. There are also canals everywhere you go connecting the coal, iron and steel production areas to the wider world.
Most of it has now gone of course, although bespoke metal bashing and steel product companies still operate. The modern Black Country now revolves around small industrial businesses, high end services and some dependence on the car industry which remains prominent in the West Midlands with Jaguar Land Rover, and Rover also making a low level return.
For myself, I am more than content now working for myself, using the skills that I’ve gathered in my working life and using them on my own terms. I was trained how to do IT support many years ago when I was at British Gas and used a break from programming to try something fresh, and that has remained with me through the years where I have been able to repair problems for people I was working with quickly and remove the need to call out the support teams. SEO I have picked up in later years and have discovered that it is wholly matched the way I like to work and have always had an ambition to do as I have always adored creative writing.
So for the long term, I will keep my focus on SEO with a little IT support as and when needed.
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categories: SEO,Black Country
