Milestone event

Well it’s an interesting number, 750. It’d be one hell of an innings at cricket and almost a world record total at scrabble. It’s the weight in tons of a giant A380 aircraft and the awesome age of the oldest sequoia trees. It’s a big amount in anybody’s language. And It just happens to be the number of postings I’ve written on Pasta Paulie with this one. In terms of total wordage it’s about 250,000 more than in War and Peace. Blimey, that’s a lot of uninformed opinion. Perhaps I should have called the blog Wordsa Paulie.

So what started out as a kind of breezy record of the ups and downs of our new life in Italy has evolved in line with our changed circumstances and return to the UK. Now it’s a platform I guess for some honest thoughts on a great variety of things I notice in my life and which I consider worthy of a few, often irreverent, words. And I do love to have a gentle poke at stuff. Of course this means that I’ll upset some folk with some of my opinions, as my recent posting on Ray Davies and song-writing creativity proved. I’ve got no problem if someone wants to argue that Steve McLaren was a worthy England manager or that Bruce Forsyth is a great entertainer because I love debate.  But I did object to some of the comment from the KInkistas when it became nasty but I decided to publish it because I believe strongly in the importance of opinion and the power of words to make people see things from a different perspective. Of course it doesn’t always work.

Most regular readers, and I am absolutely amazed, delighted and grateful that folk continue to stop by and read the blog, will know by now that I was diagnosed with cancer back in April (I don’t think the RD fans could have been aware of this). I’ve had the surgery and a now into the chemotherapy stage. Things are going fine and I am very optimistic about the future. But in the roller coaster of our life this has been a truly life-changing event. A milestone moment if you like. For someone who’s never had so much as a stitch, I now spend more time engaged with the NHS than I do with my family. It’s crazy but true. I’m really going to have to effectively write off a year of my life to get my body back fit and healthy again, hopefully. This has had a tremendous impact on my self-employed consultancy work as you’d imagine and I’ve had to think long and hard about how I can manage the ongoing treatment and continue to earn a living.

I’ve decided therefore to concentrate on what I know I can do lots of which is to write words but to do it for other people either for personal needs or for business purposes. I’ll focus strongly on the local opportunity as extensive travel is uncomfortable for me but a partnership I have formed with my brilliant nephew means we can offer an extensive range of web-design, social media activity, brand design and complete copywriting back-up to a vast number of small companies desperate for some agency expertise at home-based prices and it can all be serviced online. Now I’m learning a whole array of new things – how to use social media, how to build websites, how to maximise their impact and it’s great. I’ve got some work mojo back in my life. I’ll still blog and see through the development of 4 e-books that are in  production but I’m delighted to say we’re Open for Business despite all those bloody c words.

To show I mean business take a look at my hand-crafted (no smirking at the back) website for the writing service which I’ve rather snappily  called It’s…Write for You employing some very subtle wordplay at:

http://www.itswriteforyou.co.uk

and follow my tweets @ItsWFY

and FB at facebook.com/itswriteforyou 

and my nephew’s own site is at http://www.rulecreative.co.uk if you fancy checking out the intelligent end of the partnership.

In fact just to how what a digital smart-arse I’ve turned into, I’d love it if you could visit my personal FB page at

facebook.com/paulleonard60 and become a friend. 

Don’t be a stranger now, not after all these years. Then you can get a whole bunch of short-form words and opinion from me because clearly I’m not supplying enough through the blog.  Oh and there’s a twitter feed for the blog

@PastaPaulie

and its own FB feed facebook.com/Pasta-Paulie 

If you can follow all that you’re a true member of the 750 club. Thanks again for your continued readership; it’s truly appreciated.

pp

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