Archive for January, 2006
Highbury House receivership
Posting this mainly for the benefit of any other freelances who are trying to find out information about what to do regarding unpaid invoices following Highbury House going into receivership on January 20th.
Rob Buckley has been doing some excellent detective work and has information about the sale of various titles as well as contact addresses and phone numbers for the receivers.
The National Union of Journalists have also published details of how to submit a claim.
The titles that I wrote regular articles for, “Web Designer” and “Web Developer” appear to have been bought by Imagine Publishing and whether they will continue the titles I don’t know for sure however this thread on the magazine forum seems to indicate that they may well – if true some good news for subscribers to the magazines.
To be honest it doesn’t look too hopeful that freelance writers with outstanding payments will get anything for our work as we will be at the end of a long line of people with claims, however it’s probably worth checking as there has been mention of some money for those with work commissioned and completed since mid December.
Best wishes to all of the ex-Highbury crowd. I hope that, if the magazines do continue, there will be jobs created for those full-time employees finding themselves suddenly out of work at this point.
Four Things
The lovely Bruce Lawson has tagged me with what might be the first ever meme-thingy I’ve completed.
Four jobs I’ve had in my life
- Shop assistant (working in the high class footwear establishment that is Shoe Fayre)
- Dancer
- Silver service waitress
- Stage crew in London’s West End working on Jolson! and The Mousetrap
I’ve gone for the pre-child, pre-web jobs here, as I figure what I do now is fairly obvious, although someone accused me of being a teacher the other day.
Four movies I can watch over and over
I can’t think of any … I don’t understand why I might want to watch the same film twice. Maybe when I’ve run out of new ones to watch …
Four places I have lived
- Washington, Tyne and Wear
- Gateshead, Tyne and Wear
- London
- Maidenhead
Four TV shows I love to watch
- Time Team
- anything about religion
- late-night shows about bad drivers – I prefer the ones from the USA, other people’s bad drivers are funny. There is one that is filmed just down the road, that one makes me scared
- anything about history
Four places I have been on holiday
- North Yorkshire
- Spain .. can’t remember where, it was with school and I saw the beach and the hotel
- Paris
- Upstate New York (to visit my folks)
Four of my favourite dishes
- Dal – I made yummy coconut dal last night, I love lentils
- Lamb Tagine
- Grilled salmon and loads of fresh veg
- Most Thai food – especially vegetable dishes
Four websites I visit daily
Four places I would rather be right now
- With my new niece (although that would involve aeroplane business)
- Bed
- In a little country hotel somewhere, with the promise of a nice breakfast in the morning
- In the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, trying to find an elusive Mr Jackson born somewhere around 1750
Four bloggers I am tagging
Almost everyone seems to have done this or already been tagged, so I’ll not take the chance to pester anyone else at this point.
Happy New Year!
Due to the lurgy descending on our household, it not being particularly easy to find anywhere fun to go on New Years Eve with a small party person in tow, and us not really being that fussed we spent New Years Eve helping the Small Person to build an internal combustion engine from a kit bought for Christmas by her godparents (who understand that she isn’t the type of small person who plays with dolls). It was quite a good kit as it happens, with instructions just bad enough that it was something of a challenge, but not so bad that you give up and abandon the thing.
It’s quite difficult to find toys that are a challenge – or that leave some creativity up to the child – these days. Even Lego seems to be mainly big chunks of plastic with a few bricks to stick on the top of your castle/space ship/ Harry Potter train – although they do seem to be starting to bring out some of the kits that I remember building as a small person. I worry about the next generation … how will they ever be able to construct flat pack furniture if they haven’t been confounded by cryptic instructions from an early age?
