About
Me in class!
This is John-Paul Holder individual blog.
Hello everyone - welcome to my blog!!
A bit about me to kick things off. I’m 30 and a journalism student at Glasgow Caledonian University. It’s been a roundabout sort of journey so far. I was an undergraduate student in English Literature and Italian at St Andrews University from 1997 to 2002 (yep, occasionally had the privilege of sharing oxygen with the future king – pretty difficult to avoid in a town that size). I thought the scholarly life might be for me so headed down to London to do a postgraduate degree in Comparative Literature at University College. Things didn’t really work out. Perhaps unsurprisingly after four years in a bubble-town like St Andrews, concentration and focus didn’t come easily in the Smoke. And then the academic life, particularly in the arts, seemed too cut off from the surrounding world.
I think I can date my interest in journalism from an encounter with a bunch of hardy, hearty souls camped out in the woods next to my home town of Dalkeith. It was the middle of a pretty foul winter at the beginning of 2006 and the ’wood people’ were protesting against the construction of a bypass that would cut through the meadows and forests of a centuries-old country park.
I wanted to be involved somehow – partly because of ego (the protestors had attracted a fairly vigorous media scrum and I wanted a piece of the action); partly as a result of almost falling off the side of a hill during a night-time trek with food to one of the eco-camps. I remember feeling deep admiration for this small group (numbering at most a few dozen) for making their stand in such exposed, gloomy conditions. I wanted to investigate, interview and write about them. At that point I didn’t have the time, wherewithal or courage.
Things have built from there and I now have the beginnings of a track record in journalism, particularly arts journalism. This is my first ever blog so don’t expect wonders. Most of it will be random, rambling nonsense about nothing in particular. However, there will be plenty of posts about writers, books and related issues. I’m also hoping to write about the many individuals I’ve been privileged to meet who have come here from across the world. I’m interested in what their individual experiences – good and bad – say about today’s Scotland.
And I’ll try not to be too serious - maybe there’ll even be a bit of humour once in a while…
