I love teamwork. I love the idea of everyone rallying together to help me win.

Quotation from BAD BOY, Jarod Kintz (A zebra is the piano of the animal kingdom)

Bad but funny.

Working from home, being part of a team doesn't come so easily.

Talking to inanimate objects does.

Must try harder to meet real live people. Last night I went networking - at the Uckfield Chamber of Commerce meeting, held, rather wonderfully, at Ashdown Forest Llama Park (I didn't enquire too deeply into the ingredients of the tagine we were treated to later in the evening.)

I had to give a little talk about Quirkyworks my company...my company which is ME! My message was 'Let me revitalise your website and your marketing copy'

(Trepidation)

I thought I ought to give out business cards and wanted to be a bit different.

(Fear of being too gimmicky)

Well, I don't think people will forget me...

Look, I have crazy hair and my company name is Quirkyworks, so I could get away with it. I wouldn't recommend it as a tactic for Dull-Boring &Sons accountants, though.

And what a delightful group of people they are at Uckfield Chamber of Commerce.

It felt good to be part of something and I hope I can be a contribution.

Bloody freelance jobs are like bloody buses

You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

(With apologies to Wendy Cope)

Not that I'm complaining. Yesterday, I was in a bit of a work desert, and my camel had taken off.

...tra la la, don't panic, don't feel guilty about not contributing to the family finances, don't feel guilty that Peter's working his butt off while I'm not doing very much at home...

THEN...

I had an email from a new client, asking me to call him.

 In the meantime, I had a phone call from an existing client, asking me to do a piece of work immediately, if possible.

While I was talking to her, I had an email from someone I've worked with before asking for copy for a new website...by Sunday.

I called the new client, as arranged, and he asked me to set aside two hours every day to work for him, starting next week

While I was on the phone to him, I had an email from an existing client with another project.

Finally...earlier in the day, I had put myself forward for a MEGA job, laughing gaily to myself at my sheer effrontery...and it seems that my approach has been taken seriously...

Blimey!

You could've knocked me down with a feather!

Perhaps all this networking stuff is paying off...

The currency of real networking is generosity not greed

...says Keith Ferrazzi.

Now that makes me feel a little better, because networking is something I'm going to do. Something I have to do if I'm ever going to generate more business. Networking with Actual People, that is, not by e-mail or LinkedIn.

I have only one experience of 'networking' and it wasn't something I'd ever like to repeat. (The term networking is in quotation marks advisedly because for me it was more a case of unravelling than knitting together.)

It was for film makers, in Tunbridge Wells, if you must know, the Hollywood of...nowhere.

In a room full of film wannabes (rather like myself...but not very much) I set out to engage people in conversation, just to get to know them on some personal level, to form collaborative, creative relationships - that was my plan.

Not theirs, plainly.

As soon as they calculated that I wasn't A Useful Contact who would further their ambitious plans for world domination, starting with Tunbridge Wells, I became Ms. Invisible. Their eyes glazed over, they'd not be interested in a word I was saying about me, me having listened patiently to an endless spiel about them, and they were constantly looking over my shoulder, round the room, for Someone Better.

I wandered lonely in a crowd. (By the way, I'm not socially inept or anything. I can string words together and hold intelligent conversations on most subjects.)

I left that event feeling not so much networked as excluded, isolated and mangled.

That must have been about ten years ago. I vowed NEVER AGAIN.

So next week, I'm off to the Uckfield Chamber of Commerce AGM and dinner!

Let's form Strategic Alliance Partnerships, shall we? (See, I have all the jargon)

Let's NOT be driven by What's In It For Me?

Okay?