SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

I’ve been on the radio a lot lately, talking about Happyzine. Paul from across the road, who runs a backpackers, and also happens to be the proud father of a huge blonde dog called ‘Rachel’ (yes, you read it right, she has a very human name) was most recent person to interview me.

It happened this morning. Rachel swung by first, or rather she escaped and lumbered joyously, bum swaying, to her best friend ‘Maia’ who is my darling Golden Retriever, and Paul soon turned up on his bike for the ‘pre-interview-interview’.

While our dogs frollicked merrily (though a passer-by may have labelled it ‘alarmingly aggresively’ or perhaps ‘menacingly’) we had a chat about the plan for our pre-recorded interview on Fresh FM.

Short interlude to talk about live verses pre-recorded radio: for those who don’t know, most radio these days is pre-recorded. I find this a little strange and somewhat bewildering, but I digress. Some of it is most definitly live, and you can tell the difference. Live radio has a magic, a spontenaety, and in some instances the presenters have a slightly nervous air about them, as anything could happen live and there’s no lovely editing programme to take it all away. With pre-recorded radio, you can relax, safe in the knowledge that your stutter, grunt or ‘um’ will be erased, leaving nothing but smooth, polished radio-voice.

My radio voice has sprung forth out of the great nothingness of late. Mostly this is because I ran a good-news radio show on Fresh FM last year, and the coolest thing was they kept asking me to do radio adverts aka ‘stings’. This experience forced me to learn fast, they’d say “hmmm, could you just add a little more emphasis to the ‘top of the south’, put a little more pause into the commas and keep your tone slightly more even, that would be awesome”. Wow Mama, there’s a lot to keep in mind when you’re getting in the radio-voice groove. I can only compare it to learing to let out the clutch, apply the accelerator and steer all at once. They make it sound easy, but believe me, it takes a little time and experience before it all gels and you drive in an un-embarrising manner.

So back to my neighbour, Paul, father of Rachel the blonde dog. He finished preparing for our radio interview, tucked his clip-board beneath his arm, hopped on his bike and said “I’ll call you in ten minutes”. Then he headed off round the corner to the Fresh FM studio, so he could call me from the recording booth. I thought this was quite amusing. We did it because it seemed the easiest way to interview me while I took care of Kahu my three year old.

So, we talked shop – you know – Bollywood You Tube videos, sustainable energy design competitions, the usual kind of banter the Editor of a good news website would run with. Then, when we finished, I congratulated Paul on his sunny radio voice, and he said, once more in his normal voice, “thanks, I’ll see you in a sec.”

One of my most relaxed ever interviews took place a few weeks ago in the morning on live radio when they called at around 8.05. I’d grabbed the phone and was reclining in bed, breast-feeding, waiting for my call. Perhaps thanks to the hormones a girl releases when she’s breastfeeding, I felt quite relaxed and chattered away in a leisurely manner. In fact, I highly recommend being interviwed for the radio whilst lying in bed, and even better: breast-feeding (yet another reason why it’s good to breast-feed).

So what’s next? Well at 3.45 I’m heading round the corner to the Fresh FM studio for another radio interview with Victoria Davis. This one will be live. And Victoria is insisting that I bring my son because “all children should be welcome in the workplace”. I thoroughly agree, it’s going to be an interesting interview.

Today’s rating: 8/10

Over and out.

PS As promissed during a previous blog labelled ‘Pinned Down‘, here’s today’s e-book progress report: this is the latest eco-designer/writer I’ve beeninterviewing for my e-book.  Her name’s Bridgette Meinhold.  This is her bio: “Bridgette is an artist and freelance writer based in Park City, UT. She lives in a small A-frame cabin in an aspen grove with her husband and dog. From her front porch she has access to backcountry skiing, biking, hiking and a whole world of inspiration. When she is not creating art or dreaming about it, she has written about green design, architecture and sustainability for Inhabitat, Inhabitots, Ecouterre, eVolo and LowImpactLiving. She is currently the Architecture Editor for Inhabitat and an online contributor for eVolo Magazine.”

365 Days of Fun and Chillaxation (as I raise my gorgeous son and grow my good news website to a subscription base of 100,000 people).  The Low Down on this Blog.

Check out yesterday’s blog.

Tags: good news