I think that the drive behind this productivity is that I have been working from Costa in Newbury, my new office.

With the option of two views, one looking out over the main shopping street and the other offering a panoramic over the canal. Both allow perfect opportunity to just sit back people-watch.

The constant flow of people on and out creates the perfect kind of environment for me to work on. The only draw back is the lack of wireless access, something which doesn’t seem to be available in the tiny Starbucks across the road.

It’s easy to appear pretentious when sitting there working away on my MacBook, perhaps even more so when I’m wearing a smart shirt and tie.

Nevertheless it works for me and I hope it continues to do so.

Despite having had a number of interviews last week, and a few more in the pipeline, I am fed up with not being employed. Although I am realising that it hasn’t actually been all that long that I have been looking for a job, but it is now getting to the point where a regular income and something that I can put my effort into would be a very welcomed situation.

This is one of the projects that I have been working on. It is to be a re-working of the Barbarossa website that I originally created about a year ago. The colour scheme has been altered to reflect the new decor in both the restaurant and the newly opened wine bar.

There are some elements that I have been considering during the design process that have come about from digging into the CSS used in WordPress themes – such as creating more detailed navigation styling to reflect the current page as well as the regular link states.

The other site that I ahve been designing is for the BRUJEN Alpaca Stud farm (Alpacas are apparantly Llamas that have wool instead of hair, oh and they don’t spit either).

There will hopefully be a few others in the pipeline shortly, once I confirm more details with my various contacts.

In deciding to begin offering my services on a freelance basis, I realise that I need to rework my own portfolio site so that it is reflective of my services rather than being just a personal portfolio site.

I have been looking at the website of a number of smaller web designers & agencies that serve the kind of clients that I will be seeking. Most of these are seen as a portfolio of services & projects in a similar way that a catalogue is used to inform customers of a companies products.

Along with this will also come the joyous task of creating an actual company, so I am sure I will have lots of Tax, National Insurance and various other issues to read up on – YAY!

Nigel’s owner, Lucinda, and her neighbour Jenny have a company that raises pigs for meat. The day after I arrived they were undertaking a hog roast for a meeting of the local chamber of commerce.

Given the higher profile nature of their clients, they had decided to get some business cards designed and made for distribution at the event. This is where I came in!

I created a number of layouts based on their specifications, adding in a few alternatives with different colour options. Given the timing, the chosen design was simply printed out on a photo-quality printer on some very nice card and then hand trimmed with a guillotine.

I must say that I was also impressed with how well they came out, it was really satisfying to see a physical stack of work that I had created – especially as most of my work is purely digital.

I’ve yet to take some nice images of the cards in order to add them to my portfolio, but I will wait until I have completed the other printed items that I’m working on for them (letterhead, price lists etc).

After spending a little too much time in the local pub that evening, I cycled back up to Jenny’s the following afternoon to create another run of cards and also to get copies of the existing documents that were to be re-styled.

Shortly after sorting this, Jenny’s husband Bruce turned up along with George, Lucinda’s son. With them came the revealing of Bruce’s shotgun, a box of clay pigeons and a few boxes of cartridges. My eyes lit up!

After setting up the trap from which to launch the clays, I observed Bruce taking a few shots and obliterating the clays. He then handed me his shotgun.

Shooting is something that has always interested me but has always been something that I had never been able to pursue. A few shots later, managing to hit a number of clays, I was certain that this would not be the first and last time that I fired a shotgun.

Every aspect of it was fantastic! Feeling the weight of the gun in my hands as  I tracked the clays’ flight, the impact of firing the shot, seeing the clay explode and then the smell of the spent cartridge, all added up to leave me absolutely certain that this was indeed something that I will continue to do in the future.

Livi had told me that she would get me a shotgun for my 25th, an offer which put a rather large smile on my face!

I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people for me to get to know thorugh Livi! As well as Bruce, Jenny, Lucinda and Nick I also got the chance to have a conversation with Pete a local gamekeeper. I had followed the New Years day hunt with Pete and had discussed the prospects of me getting into shooting at that time, but this was obviously something that couldn’t be followed up due to my commitments with university.

The offer still seems to be there for me to go and help out on a few shoots with him, allowing me to get into that scene from the ground level. It was good to have Pete’s enthusiasm regarding me shooting – seeing it as the much needed young blood to get involved with the sport in order to continue it through the years.

I plan on treating myself to a shooting lesson at the time when I start to have regular money coming in once again. Although I may use some of the money generated from making websites to pursue this endeavour