Pitching the World

Readers may be stunned to hear that my shabby-as-hell travel pitch has received a reply. It reads:

Hi, there; So sorry to hear about your wife. Not sure that self-improvement
is such a great idea but do come up with some travel thoughs and you could
always weave in your personal situation etc.

Readers may be less stunned to hear that despite assurances I was going to be updating this blog daily with pitches, I failed on day two. And although I promised to take down Pitching the World if I didn’t fulfil my promises, I’m not going to. And I’m not going to because the only reason I didn’t put a pitch up yesterday was to prove a point. Pitching the World, you see, is concerned not only with pitching a very small part of the world not very regularly, but also with the life of a freelance journalist. And this freelance journalist has been simultaneously working as a researcher on a documentary and being sort of homeless and hasn’t had a great deal of time. Hence no pitch being posted.

I do, however, have the time to give an insight into the sort of readers this award-winning fucker attracts. Today, people found themselves on Pitching the World after searching for:

‘pictures of egg’

‘crack houses’

‘egg’

‘pictures of a egg’

‘pitching the world’

‘egg pictures’

‘egg images’

‘living in bournemouth’

‘pic of a egg’

‘cath boundy’

Most of my new readers, it seems, are fans of eggs or pictures of eggs and not fans of grammar. I don’t know how to take this.

Dear Guardian/Daily Mail Travel Ed,

I’m in a tight spot. I thought I was in a tight spot before, but I wasn’t. I am now. I had been planning a holiday this summer with my wife, but recently my wife has done the decent thing and left me. The decent thing for me to do in this situation is still go on holiday. But I’m in a tight spot. First, because over the last eighteen or so months my soon-to-be-ex-wife and I have, in one form or another, been across most of the planet and I’m reluctant to go somewhere where the memories are still too raw. Second, I’d like go somewhere and improve myself, not just get drunk, get involved in meaningless romantic encounters and get imprisoned, no matter how attractive that might sound.

What I’m proposing for a feature then, is this: I find a suitable holiday where self-improvement is key and write about it, perhaps under the umbrella of “Holidays for when you’ve just broken up” or something equally as catchy. Perhaps something where I learn to sing for a week, or work in the favellas of Rio or study philosophy in Greece. Something, in short, whereby I come back a better a person.

Now, I realise this idea sounds rubbish but it only sounds rubbish because I’m a bit drunk. The idea itself is beautiful. Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK split up with long-term partners every year and they all still want to go away and come back better. I’ll tell them where to go, so to speak.

Yours Sincerely,

Pitching the World

PS Believe it or not I have plenty of clips from travel magazines and newspapers, including your own, should you wish to see them.

* Except, of course, it isn’t. In fact, it’s the worst pitch I’ve ever sent and that, truly, is saying something.

If you’ve come here to read about a massive fuck-up pitching magazines, then look away now. I’m becoming less of a fuck-up by the second and, for the time being at least, have stopped pitching magazines. I’ve stopped pitching magazines not, as some of you might suspect, because I don’t have the stomach or the inclination, but because my dog eared copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook is in London, and I’m down here, in Shitmouth.

That is the only reason: the absence of a book. Not the absence of ideas, nor the absence of enthusiasm, but the absence of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. Those of you who have witnessed me fumble around and fuck-up over the last ten months or so will know that when I’ve got the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook by my side I’m unstoppable. I’m a machine.

Now, I’m well aware that a lack of copy from Pitching the World could well throw the publishing industry into a funk from which it never recovers so with that in mind I’ve decided to direct my efforts towards the swill that is British Newspapers. Yes, I thought this morning, why not give newspapers the privilege of rejecting my ideas time and bastard time again rather just magazines? Why not spread it around a bit?

I’ve written for newspapers before of course. Oh, of course. I’ve written for The Guardian (three times), The Independent (once), The Daily Mail (twice) and the News of the World (once). A paltry amount, but if you were ever unfortunate to hear me talking about my ‘career’, you would think that I was far more prolific. When people ask me what I do and who I write for I tell them: ‘Oh, you know, I write for The Guardian [the last time was in January this year, the time before that in June 2008], The Independent [one feature in spring 2007], The Daily Mail [one feature I wrote for The Guardian which was bought by the Mail in June 2008, another late last year that was originally a 2,000 piece that they cut down to 400 words] and, well, sometimes the News of the World [not even really true this one. One feature for the News of the World’s Fabulous magazine which hasn’t run yet]. But most of my stuff is for magazines [this bit it true. It needs to be].

But I’d like to write more for newspapers. And it is possible for me to write more for newspapers, clearly I haven’t really written that much for newspapers. This week then, I’ll be pitching at least one newspaper per day, starting tomorrow of course. And, from tomorrow, I’ll be putting up a pitch a day until Friday. No more talk (for a bit), about going bald and mad or about beetroot or ballooning alcoholism or the time (yesterday) when I listened to Clair de Lune and fell to bits. Instead, just pitches with no fluff. And if I don’t do this – and there’s definitely no way that I won’t do this – then on Friday I will take Pitching the World down, never write another entry, and go and work on the bins for the next decade or two. This, it seems, is what it has come down to.

Life’s tough sometimes. Luckily, I too am tough sometimes. Recently, my wife and I separated. Consequently, I have fled London and am now living in Bournemouth. I say living in Bournemouth, but it’s more squatting in Bournemouth. Bournemouth, for those who don’t know, has nice beaches, a relaxed, pleasant town centre and some of the dullest and shittest and stupidest people on the planet. I fit right in.

Luckily however, I am tough sometimes and although I may be dull and shit and stupid at the moment, I won’t be dull and shit and stupid forever. I’ve written a list, you see. At the top of the list I’ve written ‘2 Ways’ with two arrows pointing downwards. [By the way, this isn’t a very good post, is it? I think it’s been around seven weeks since my last entry and you’d probably be expecting something spectacular, and although my circumstances are spectacular – “my wife and I separated”; I’m “squatting in Bournemouth” – I’m not really doing them justice and just kind of glossing over them. Sorry about that.] The ‘2 Ways’ refers to the two different ways my life could be headed. At the end of one arrow I’ve written ‘Drink’. At the end of the other arrow I’ve written ‘Trumpet’, ‘Stoicism’, ‘Kickboxing’ and ‘Writing’.

Basically, if I continue to drink I’m in trouble. If, however, I learn to play the trumpet, practice stoicism, go kickboxing three of four times a week and spend the rest of the time writing then I’ll be fine. There’s a certain comfort there: knowing that if I do these four things then whatever life throws at me, I’ll be able to throw it right back at life.

Assuming you can be bothered, watch this space.

You’ll never guess what I’ve been up to this morning. I’ve only gone and started applying for more restaurant reviewing positions. Yes, as my breakdown-inducing deadline for this current batch (130) lurches ever closer (Sunday) and with time at a premium, I decided this morning to take a few hours off (I can’t afford to take minutes off at the moment, let alone hours) and tout myself around as an up-and-coming critic. I should be fucking locked up.

I put my loopy behaviour down to the absence of my wife, who has flown off to Hong Kong. I tend to go a bit tonto when she’s away. Yesterday I went into a Turkish barbers and theatrically instructed them to shave off all my hair. No longer do I look like an ageing Italian footballer. No, now with my skinhead I look like an egg, and not a particularly good egg. But the oddball behaviour doesn’t end with getting misjudged haircuts, applying for jobs that give me breakdowns or living solely off pate on toast and hot Ribena. Whilst reviewing a restaurant earlier today in Canonbury, the chef suggested I come in for a meal with my ‘lovely lady’. “I’d love to,” I told him “but she’s away at the moment” – and then, inexplicably, I winked at him. I don’t really know why I did this. I think somewhere in my junk shop of a mind I was trying to convey that my wife was in prison. Again, I don’t really know why. But I don’t think he got it – I don’t blame him – I think he just thought I was on some kind of spurious gay cruise.

And so it goes on. This afternoon will see me trudging the mean streets of Crouch End – to mop up the few places I haven’t reviewed. I’ve been to Crouch End several times over the last few weeks, know which restaurants I need to visit and yet I always seem to go back there. I’ll always leave a few, reasoning that I’ll do them ‘some other time’. But why? Why not just do them while I’m there – when I’m there and can actually see them – rather than thinking ‘it’s okay, I can come back’? I live a couple of miles away from Crouch End and never (apart from reviewing) have a reason to go there, yet my notebook is full of stuff like: ‘Afternoon – Crouch End?’ Or “Crouch End again toady?’ I know that I’ll go there this afternoon and leave at least one restaurant to do in my fast running out time. It’s ridiculous. And, perhaps, fitting. In fact, ‘Crouch End Again?’ could well be my epitaph.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. My afflictions that is. As if being sort of fat, sort of bald, sort of mad and sort of broke wasn’t enough – and, come on, it should be more than enough – I’ve only gone and developed a twitch. My right eye’s going. My right eye has had enough and is trying to get out of me. I don’t blame it. I’d get out of me too, given the chance.

My right eye wants to go, I think, as result of my recent nervous breakdown. It happened last week on holiday. ‘Oh splendid’, I thought mid-breakdown, ‘of course who but me should be having a breakdown whilst on fucking holiday. How boringly predictable’. My breakdown was spectacularly pathetic: one moment I was sat eating breakfast, the next I was shaking, (sort of) crying, and wondering whether or not I should ask the waitress to call someone (I didn’t know who), hold me, or slap me in the face. In the end I didn’t, I just lost my mind for a couple of days and resolved to give up the booze.

Which of course I haven’t. But I am cutting down and I am addressing the root cause of the breakdown. It’s these bastard restaurant reviews. Loyal readers will remember the day when I officially received the commission and spent the afternoon watching Balls of Fury and wondering “Why? Why am I not working on this commission that took months to land?’ 

Well, it’s got worse. At the time I thought that two and a half months was ample time to conduct 130 restaurant reviews. Even if I did three or four a day they would get done with weeks to spare. Then, as time went on, the maths became tougher. Maths became my enemy. A month or so ago I was thinking ‘Well, if I do thirty-odd a week – and that’s more than manageable – then I should make it.’ Then I went on holiday and went (sort of) mad for a bit, but I was still thinking ‘Okay, I’ve fucked up, but I can still manage ten reviews a day when I get back. It’ll be tough, but it can be done.’ Now that figure is nudging up and my time is running out. What if by this time next week I’m still wrestling with the maths? ‘Right’ – and I know this is exactly what I’ll be thinking – ‘right, I’ve got three and a half days left. If I do 40 reviews a day I’ll be fine – more than fine’. And so on. Regular, loyal readers will know that the day before the deadline I’ll be sat in my sad flat wondering if I can manage 12 reviews an hour.

Why do I do this to myself? Put myself under such pressure? Partly because I’m an idiot, I think, but mainly because I know when the restaurant reviews are done the only work I have to look forward to is Pitching the World. And Pitching the World ain’t ace. I see Pitching the World as a kind of oddball son, a son who unnerves me a little and, if it were an actual son, I would keep him locked in the attic.

If anyone has a calculator, please let me know. 

A holiday, earlier

I’ve been reviewing restaurants today. It hasn’t been pretty. Throughout the day tiny insects have been falling from the sky and making me their home. I’m not sure why. They nestled in my hair, in my ears, below my eyes, in my shirt pockets. I was a bug magnet. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know until I started going into the restaurants I had to review. It wasn’t until then that these creatures decided they’d had enough of me and began to leap out. 

Like I said, it wasn’t pretty. A man fizzing with mental health issues, a spectacularly chaotic rug (if you thought my hair was bad before, you should see it now) and an unconvincing story about being the section editor of a well-regarded restaurant guide was previously enough to make the managers of the places I was reviewing to regard me with suspicion. A man with all the above but with bugs flying out of him clearly made them terrified. “Ah well,” I thought to myself as the insects dropped from me onto the floor, “this is a new low point in my life. In a life peppered with seemingly unbeatable low points, this just about trumps everything. From now on, I’ll be known in restaurant reviewing circles as the man who reviews restaurants with bugs falling out of him”.

What’s next, I wonder? Larger animals crawling out of my trousers as I try to convince my in-laws that their daughter married the right man? Stuff crawling out of my ass at the bus stop? Getting sectioned under the Mental Health Act? Nothing, frankly, would surprise me anymore. 

Whilst I drink away my problems and impress people in the pub with my bug show, here’s the reason I decided to do what I do. Arguably the greatest fictional journalist of all time.

Of course there are many good things about being a freelance writer, despite this blog relentlessly suggesting otherwise. I haven’t quite found it to be “the life of kings” as H.L. Mencken suggests, but if there weren’t parts of it that I didn’t enjoy, then why would I do it? Because I can’t do anything else? Because I either got booted out of or quit somewhere in the region of 70 jobs in the wilderness that was pre-Pitching the World? 

Partly. I do it partly because although I’m not quite good enough to do this, I’m better at doing this than I am at doing other things. Worrying, perhaps, but you should have seen me, for example, as a plasterer’s labourer. But there are other reasons.

Look down there then, and you’ll see the definitive guide to what I’m snappily calling “some good things – but not all the good things – about being a freelance journalist”:

1. Anything can happen. This is true. As a journalist you never know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. Well you sort of do, but other journalists say that you don’t so you might not do. You could get a call one morning from an editor asking you to go on an all-expenses trip to the Antarctic, or to spend six months undercover in a crack house in Tottenham, or something else equally exciting. This has never happened to me but it might do. See? Exciting. Knowing that ‘anything can happen’.

A crack house in Tottenham, earlier.

2. You get to interact with the public. Even though you may hate the public, get scared by the public or not know exactly who the public really are, you get to interact with them. Even if you just sit at home chain smoking Camels and the only public who you interact with is yourself in the mirror whilst you’re ‘trying out’ other personalities, point 2 is still a valid one.

The public, earlier.

3. You can make a difference. Whether this is exposing a scandal, helping to shape policy, or simply putting a smile on the public’s faces, journalists can and do make a difference to the world. That this journalist doesn’t – nor ever will – do any of the above is moot.

The earth, earlier.

4. The pleasure of writing.  Doesn’t really need examining – can be pleasurable. Plus, I’m getting a kick out of being able to insert images into my posts. It’s only taken eight months to work this out.

Someone getting pleasure from writing, earlier.

5. You can be your own boss. Meaning you can choose when to work, and how to conduct yourself when you’re at work. I choose to conduct myself by smoking and drinking lots, opening the fridge lots and seeing how many kick ups I can do with a tennis ball lots (14, at the last count). That said, this is exactly how I behaved in my previous 70-odd jobs; perhaps an indication of why they didn’t last.

Someone smoking lots, earlier.

This morning I sent a pitch to Sabotage Times. I say pitch but it wasn’t really, wasn’t really at all. More of a bio. I had been on the recently launched Sabotage Times website and wanted to be part of their impressive list of contributors. They all had bios. Here was my effort that I sent to the editor: 

“Pitching the World got thrown out of Truro School at 16 for handling stolen goods and selling drugs. Since then he’s worked as a door-to-door salesman, a croupier, an antiques restorer, a chainboy, a removals man, a barman, and an unemployed man. He’s now a writer man and has contributed to all the usual toss. Steven once made a film about a man who claimed to be both Clint Eastwood and the King of Spain but just as it was about to get commissioned, he fucked it up. In December 2009, aged 34, he had a trial for Colchester United but fucked it up. He did go on to write about his experience for the Guardian, but fucked that up as well. In June 2009 he worked as a political speechwriter in the Caribbean, and for a while didn’t fuck up at all, but in the end he did. He now runs the award winning Pitching the World (www.pitchingtheworld.wordpress.com) – a blog about pitching all of the 642 magazines listed in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. He hasn’t fucked this up yet, but will do. He is married to a psychopharmacologist and lives in Stoke Newington. He claims to be ‘a regular guest’ on Radio 4, but research suggests that he has only been on there once.”

The Radio 4 stuff is true, I was a guest last Saturday. The other stuff is (mostly) true, too. 

Anyway, Sab Times is run by James Brown, founder of Loaded, contributor to just about everything and bearer of an uncanny resemblance to the anti hero in The Adventures of Pitching the World. He was once voted more influential than the Pope and Margaret Thatcher (and presumably, more influential than the other James Brown) by Channel 4 and The Observer. In short, a big deal. But not so big a deal that he didn’t respond to Grandmaster Pitchy almost immediately.

His response:

Two things: one I like your pitch, two we don’t pay. 

So if you fancy pitching some ideas on these terms go ahead.

cheers James  

What to do? Pitchy doesn’t like to work for free (and has never done), but does want to work for Sabotage Times. Here’s the next instalment of The Adventures of Pitching the World, which neatly sums up my dilemma. 

Alright Shoulders. I’ve had that James Brown emailing 

me all day. Bit persistent really. Wants me to write for them.

Might – might – not get paid for it though. You may have

to get a second – I mean third – job. 

Please don’t leave me. 

– This is fun, isn’t it? Us, being in a cartoon. Means 

I don’t have to do any pitching. Can’t, can I? Not in

a cartoon. 

– Your hair could do with a bit of work. Shoulders a bit

big too.

– Please don’t leave me.