Back to the Future I thought I had. [Bio part 2]

I don’t know when I realised I wanted to write, I just remember always getting pens and pads for presents...so I would just write whatever came to me as I hung around my parents clothes stores. I was such a nerd I used to date my work too, some of them date back to ’91 which means I’ll have been 8.

First issue of Vibe I bought in 1996. Fugees cover - with a free casette featuring demos by D'Angelo and Erykah Badu

I used to buy all the magazines I could when I was younger, mainly Smash Hits, BIG, Top of the Pops, Vibe, Blues & Soul, Off The Wall, the odd copy of anything else with someone I really liked on the cover. A lot of times I thought "I could ask better questions than these people."

Many years later, in my Sixth Form book I wrote I wanted to be a music journalist.

When we studied a module on media at school I became really interested in becoming a journalist and writing books because I thought nobody was representing my opinions and I wanted to share my voice.

I was always inspired by my family and friends faith in my talents, but I had a lot of opportunites and setbacks which shouldn't have been hard to recover from if I had believed in myself.

I remember for my GCSE coursework we had write a story and a poem, I loved that assignment based on a jazz musician. When I got my work back my poem was missing. When I asked my teacher what happened she told me she entered it in a competition.

I didn't back my work up...I tried to recreate the poem but I never could re-write it. I don't know which competition she entered it into or if she won - I'd like to think it was that good that she did!

When I was 17 I saw a flyer in the library to be part of a BBC Talent workshop to create a pilot soap set in Bradford which ended up being called Khidaaar! [which apparently means what’s up in urdu – I think]

It was the most fun thing I had ever done in my life at that point, I loved working in a team creating a character, my group selected me to pitch our characters storyline

I won the first and last scene for my team's character which was a massive achievement. I thought this would be where my future lies. The show was directed by Kate Rowland who was head of BBC Radio. I ended up storyboarding for the episode and script editing and loved every minute of it.

My BA [Hons] degree was in Media Studies at Sheffield Hallam Uni.  I got my experience in journalism, pr, writing for film and writing for TV and learnt about media around the world and its history.

As soon as it was all ending I got a call, from someone who I’d worked with on the BBC Talent soap, saying he remembered how hard I worked and asked me if I would help him with a new company he set up.

I ended up being a band liaison manager – looking after the music artists he signed up. I’d accompany them on festivals and take care of their backing tracks.

After a while I ended up as company secretary – just because the role was available, I guess! I threw myself into the work, without getting paid as I was living off my student loan [I was very good –  non drinker here!].

I loved that we hosted workshops for people of any age. We ended up writing a theatre piece and performing it in 2 cities for Black History Month 2004. I designed the flyer [with 1 or 2 mistakes on it]. It was great, conceiving the play with the CEO and the participants who were encouraged to develop their characters.

We also made a film documentary called “When Something Ruled The World” which got screened alongside our theatre piece .

I was also responsible for a member of staff under the job centre scheme and speaking to the local press, Huddersfield Examiner in which we were featured quite a lot.

It was an amazing role, I left it not because I wasn’t getting paid properly, I would still be there but I could never stick up for myself and I would get blamed for everything going wrong. It still makes me emotional thinking about it, because I lost a job I loved so much. I never found anything like it since.

My confidence was knocked, my self esteem was shattered and  I couldn’t get a job like that again and thought I would fail at it anyway. I ended up at a call centre for just over 2 years listening to people who were in debt. I’d go home and cry about their day as well as mine. It was awful hearing their stories. The only thing that kept me there so long was the fact I really loved my team.

It got to the point where I thought if I can’t get a job doing what I want, maybe I should run my own theatre workshop group, which I found hard to get off the ground, I didn't want to do it the way I learnt from my previous boss, I wanted to start small scale and with funding, so while trying to set that up I thought I'd get a job at least using my IT skills.

I got a job in admin that was different from the call centre, I liked a couple of people but otherwise I was surrounded by mostly miserable people who’d worked there a long time, and I didn’t want to become one of them, so after almost 2 years I managed to get another admin job at Bradford Council.

Admin, although I could do it well, I began to sink. Saving me though -  my stifled creativity was bursting to come back out with the theatre project, some free lance articles and I ended up on a music album...