GUEST BLOGGER: Nancy Cavill
Nancy is based in a village eight miles from Brecon and runs Everymedia Solutions.
www.everymediasolutions.co.uk
 

IT’S not every lunch break that offers you the chance to listen to the sound of sheep munching. But that’s how it is for me when I step out of my office into my garden, which is adjacent to a field. I live and work in my home, which is in a small village in the always beautiful – even in the rain – Brecon Beacons National Park.

Outside there are wall-to-wall views of mountains, with the odd forest and river thrown in. From inside my office (in my converted garage, the glamour!) if I crane my neck I can see a 550-metre mountain peak – when it’s not surrounded by cloud.

What a difference a few years can make.

Back then I was working as a freelance journalist, writing and subbing for newspapers and other magazines, and living in Wales’ capital city, Cardiff.
I love the city and I had to be dragged kicking and screaming by an outdoorsy husband to start a new life in the country. How would we cope with the commute to town, I asked. And what if no-one talks to ‘outsiders’?

I needn’t have worried. Village life turns out to be just as sociable, if not more so, than urban dwelling. And the issue of the commute never reared its head.

My work life has been transformed. I no longer write for print but for all things online – so, of course, it doesn’t matter where I live. Or rather, it matters to me where I live but not to the people I write for!

One minute I can be speaking to the switched-on landlord of a local pub who wants ‘things to do’ content for the pub’s website (visitors bring in much of the pub’s trade and tourism is a major industry here). The next I’m talking to a marketing manager in central London who wants his firm’s brochure copy re-written.

Local business meetings take place in the pub – usually with coffee rather than a pint – and some now even offer free wi-fi. Just like the city! For business meetings further afield Skype works wonders.

I have a virtual network of colleagues now thanks to social media. But then again, I know colleagues in a busy city office who sit in the same room but tweet each other rather than wander over for a chat, so I don’t feel too deprived.