Snow, Skypes and social media

I really hope my mum would have been proud of me. It's been a wild week but in the front of my mind has always been that this was the time of year when Rita Warrillow was born(on 7/1/1938) and died (14/1/1987).
Thus it was that I found myself ankle-deep in snow in a churchyard in Worcestershire on Sunday, looking for her headstone amid the snow and frost. It's unfortunate that it is at this time of year but I will not forget; once you do that, a huge part of you disappears forever. Rest in peace, mum.
The rest of the week has been frantic; Monday: an afternoon of networking in some of Lichfield's finest hostelries; it may look like drinking, but in fact it's getting to know some very important people - and a very nice man paid me for my first commission so the least I can do is show you where to find him: http://www.maxamcards.co.uk/
Much of the rest of the week has been spent on the magazine. My joint-editor and I had a three-hour skype on Tuesday morning, drawing up what news-on-dead-trees journalists would call a flat-plan, then there were articles to write, people to chase up over features and pictures, articles to write for foreign magazines - I'm going to be published in Canada in the spring - and Plan B to draw up just in case Plan A fell apart, which it duly did at 10am on Thursday morning.
I even found time to squeeze in some learning. Before Christmas,Jo Ind (another recent Birmingham Post evacuee) put me in touch with Pete Ashton, one of the leading lights on the Birmingham social media scene. It took a while to arrange a meeting, but two hours in a freezing coffee bar in Birmingham city centre taught me more than I could have ever imagined about blogs and has, hopefully, made this one just that bit snappier than it was a week ago.
So thanks, Pete; thanks, Jo; thanks, Andy; thanks, Paul and Jim; thanks, Tom and Andrew...and thanks, mum.