4 posts from March 2008

Daffodils

The French President came to the UK this week for a State visit. He impressed us with his Anglophile speeches and effusive praise, and his wife wowed us with her glamour and French chic. They stayed at Windsor Castle where they had lunch with the Queen and attended a State Banquet in their honour in the evening. The following day they mixed politics with pleasure and then left for home, leaving behind feelings of admiration and thoughtfulness. It seems apparent that when you’re being criticised at home, arrange a visit abroad and you can usually receive genuine appreciation from your host which builds your international stature.
 
Of course this doesn’t always work when what you do at home is already incensing international relations; but the French have always been linked to the British and certainly for the past one thousand years. Maybe it is this familiarity that sometimes causes contempt and the occasional friction. From the time of the Norman invasion in 1066, the two nations have been in conflict right up to the mid-nineteenth century. But in the twentieth century we began to understand the importance of France to Britain and standing together, the importance of both countries to Europe as a whole.

Mind you over the past few decades, there has been some suspicion in both camps as to the importance of each to each other. As the largest island in Europe, we have often ourselves as more an outpost of Europe rather than an integrated part, and France has often said ‘well suit yourselves!’. So to be addressed in such a warm manner as the French President did last week, was a surprise. Maybe we do have more in common than we have always thought and maybe continental Europe is important to us. Hopefully the gentle but straightforward encouragement that the French President offered our politicians, will bring home the reality that we can no longer sit in splendid isolation as when the British Empire covered large parts of the globe. That globalisation is no longer so specific and we have to accept our natural differences, but understand that we actually live in the same camp.

I'm about to embark on an attempt at starting a new career in voiceovers, but first before I offer my voice to any service, I must be able to produce a high quality recording. So I'm doing a twelve module course on the fundamentals of digital recording. As yet I don't understand a lot of what I'm reading and the specification of an audio program I'd like to buy is total confusion to me - but I'm going to try. I'll learn more and new connections will be made in my brain. Hopefully I'll achieve what I set out to do, but I am doing this while I'm still in full time employment. The idea is that when I eventually retire, I shall have the voiceover activity to simply continue with. I know there's a lot of competition and I know that my voice is not right for everything. The important thing to me is that it keeps me active and also that since my accent was in effect given to me by my mother, I carry on a heritage in a living way.

I didn't originally set out to get into voiceovers. What I had originally done was make a CD where I read different literary pieces that I liked and sent it to an Internet friend in Brazil. The quality wasn't good but the pieces were. Then from comments I received from works colleagues and friends, I decided that there might be something more in this vocie recording business and I've gone on from there. It seems to me that everyone has a lot of potential but doesn't always have the confidence to realise it, or is late in understanding what they're capable of. Whether or not I succeed in my venture will not only depend upon more on my marketing abilities than perhaps on my voice alone, but I have the optimism of not knowing precisely how the future will pan out. So unlike a lot of people who forecast doom and gloom, I have decided to see a light at the end of the tunnel.