So, I've landed an internship at a news wire. It's in London, Fleet Street to be precise, and it's a bit like a deja vu where you know the last time you did it wasn't as good as this one, inexplicably. I felt much less like a fraud standing on the underground platform a year on, maybe because I've matured, maybe because of my slick new haircut. Maybe because it's a bit more of a serious stab at getting into the business. That said, I still felt a bit of a fraud, looking around at all the worn down commuters in suits and faces pinstriped with age, only much less of one.
After a bit of a round-about wander via a coffee shop from Farringdon station, I found Fleet Street. Very nice building, 107-111 Fleet Street. Ornate, on the corner, old. Better than the cuboid of peeling white paint I was visiting in Kentish Town just over a year ago. Another bonus over last year's internship is that it's going on for more than just a couple of weeks, and I'll be shown all sorts of bit and bobs to do with the business side of it too- even today I've had the two white boards covered in what looks like enough algebra to make a new-age Enigma powered hyperdrive explained to me. The third bonus? I'm actually getting expenses paid so I can travel in and out, not being expected to land myself in debt to work for free.
Once again though I was sat for quite a while with nothing to do. That was a combo of me being too shy and timid to chat to anyone about doing something else and it being a slow news day apparently. The majority of the articles "wot I writ" were taken off of the freelancers who said they couldn't do them today.
Come lunchtime I wasn't faring a whole lot better. Managed to get a little bit lost as I wandered around between St Paul's, Blackfriars and Temple for a lunchtime stroll, but righted myself almost immediately. I then had the misfortune to witness a lady breastfeeding her child in Cafe Nero, which wouldn't have been so bad in itself except for the fact that the simplicity of that sentence is a lie. What I witnessed was a woman with what I can only imagine are the largest natural mammary glands known to man beating her child around the face with one- and it's clearly had an effect, as this poor bugger's face looked like that of a forty-five year old Irish farmhand who indulged in a bare-knuckle boxing addiction. I almost choked on my espresso, once I'd worked out what was going on.
Most embarrassingly I managed to get lost in the building by forgetting what room I was returning to after said lunch, and had to ring them from down the corridor.
A positive end to the day came with the big boss man Ed saying I'd successfully negotiated a very sharp learning curve for myself with regards to their style guide (which, frankly, was very different to what I'm used to, being thrown together from international business B2B consistency, The Economist and The Guardian- a bastardised version of The Guardian style guide, hacked and cut where the powers that be saw fit, was the gospel at SCAN) and the promise of getting into a meaty project editing and updating company info. I'm looking forward to tomorrow- got a lovely smart red jumper to wear, to follow on from my impressive teal shirt today and convince them that yes, I am capable of fitting in with smart-looking people. And the work is interesting- today I covered the American and Chinese real estate markets, worldwide Skype security breaches and huge money-guzzlers buying each other.
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