Fair Way

Around this time last month, I volunteered to start working as a writer and photographer for a news portal covering local charity work. After a couple of false starts, I went on my first assignment as a roving reporter today, in Bromsgrove. Not the most exotic of locations to kick things off, but of course, you have to start in some place or other. I imagine even Michael Buerk began his career somewhere like Doncaster Municipal Scrapyard or Hilton Park Service Station, quietly thinking to himself "I can't fucking wait till I get to Ethiopia."

I have, at least, a very good reason to be in Bromsgrove. The organisers of the Birmingham Games have set up a charity golf day to benefit Acorns Children's Hospice Trust, and I'm keen to give them the publicity they deserve. But getting to the golf course proves to be a nightmare and a half, as Bromsgrove is the land where pedestrians have been driven from their homes and forced to live as outlaws in the forest beyond the endless roundabouts and dual carriageways. Not a problem, I think at first; I'll just hop in a taxi. Only then do I discover that there is a notable taxi-famine thereabouts, because Bromsgrove is also the land where any individual who does not own their own car is expected to dress as a buffoon and caper around in the road for the amusement of the citizenry.

At one point I stop a local, jogging with his dog along a leafy suburban avenue - all wide driveways and houses with names instead of numbers - and ask where I'm likely to be able to flag a taxi. Judging from his horrified expression, I may as well have asked where I can pick up a Burmese prostitute. He looks on the verge of asking, "What do you need a taxi for? Has your Land Rover broken down?" Still, he's eventually able to point me in the general direction of where he once saw someone hail a cab around 1996, and after a full hour of faffing about - plus four quid fare - I finally manage to reach the golf club that I could have walked to in ten minutes if they'd bothered to put a pavement and a pedestrian crossing in the bloody vicinity.

Thankfully, it's all worthwhile; the folks in the picture have, over the last couple of years, raised over fifteen grand between them for charity, and are hoping to significantly increase that figure in the future. It's a genuine pleasure to meet them, and they seem grateful to me for having made the pilgrimage halfway across the West Midlands to take an interest. Acorns is one of the worthiest causes that it's possible to support, and after a whistle-stop round of photographs and chat with the participants, I pledge to do as much as I can to cover their events in future. It's short but sweet; the ideal introduction to "professional" photo-journalism.

Though I have no intention of neglecting this ol' journal of mine, I have to admit that it feels good to use my superpowers for something other than taking pictures of flowers and ranting pointlessly. The Pulitzer Prize is probably a long way off, but I'm happy to finally be doing something that feels like it matters.