New Beginnings and a Wider Web
Early in 2002 I was in a shell-shocked frame of mind. Within a few months my marriage had broken up and I'd left my house, my dear friend Dorothy Dunnett had died suddenly, my 21 year job had disappeared from under me, and a subsequent relationship by which I'd set great store had failed. I was on the dole and wondering what value I had in the jobs marketplace.
Starting an IT training course for which I was vastly over-qualified I got first a placement and later a job with new media and search engine optimisation company Bigmouthmedia, doing primarily design and development. This was culture shock after the refined world of the book trade and finances were tight. However it was an interesting experience finding that I was one of the oldest people in the company and I learned a lot about search engine optimisation and more competitive ways of doing business. I started to learn about other web development methods and was constantly updating my knowledge of the new CSS-based methods of design. The team was a varied mix and sometimes a little volatile but we generally got on well and we even got a nice Xmas bonus of a trip to Amsterdam which was great fun.
A Temporary Return to Theatre and Sound
However after a year the development work dried up and I was out of work
again. Good advice seems to be impossible to come by via government agencies
for middle management or IT based workers and I found I was sucked into
a round of useless courses and demands to prove I was applying for jobs
that I was unlikely to be considered for - usually because the employers
assumed I would leave for something better after a short time. 
Eight
months of this and no income of any sort meant moral was low when my old
friend and flat-mate John Sampson told me that he was off on another theatre
tour to Germany but that they had a problem. Their regular sound engineer
and chief technician was another old friend, Phil Martin. Phil was suffering
from high blood pressure and had been told not to go on tour. I must have
been at a low ebb for it never entered my head that I might take over
from him. Admittedly it was about 15 years since I'd done any serious
sound engineering but John and I had always worked well together and he
talked the company into taking me along. When he broke the news I was
completely gobsmacked and it's a moment and a favour that I'll never forget.
A couple of weeks later and I was in Bath for rehearsals of Scarlatti
in Paradise and remembering skills and a life that I'd loved dearly. The
tour of Germany was a great success with excellent performances to enthusiastic
audiences and a couple of months of sheer bliss for me.
Back to Web Design and Search Engine Optimisation
Having been on various small business courses during my unemployed period I'd decided to set up a small web design business called SpiderWriting specialising in sites for creative clients such as authors, publishers, and musicians, but just as it was getting tentatively started I was offered a job by former Bigmouthmedia colleague John Hughes who had just started Indicium Web Design, and I started commuting to Livingston where he'd converted his upstairs room into an office. Within a few months we'd been asked to take over the running of a high-ranking but small SEO company called Oyster Web and we then bought it from the previous owner. With this we grew to a team of five although like all small companies the cash-flow was a constant battle. We survived some difficult times including the threat of imminent redundancy yet again, and a couple of personnel changes, and in March of 2006 we moved into proper offices in Pumpherston.
In the meantime I've continued to keep the SpiderWriting website going and it's been joined by SpiderWritingSEO so that if I ever need to go solo again full time I have existing sites which have established search engine rankings. In the last two years my SEO skills have developed enormously to the point where I consider that as much my core ability as my web development ones.