Dear sir or madam,
I would love to be considered for this project. I am an experienced proofreader/editor and very familiar with UK English.
Here is a sample of my writing:
Writing samples
(Reviews)
Frankie Boyle Live on Stage
Got back yesterday afternoon from a weekend spent in London. We went to see the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle at the Arts Theatre in the West End. It was amazing to see just how many people were out and about in the Leicester Square area on Saturday night. It was extremely lively, to say the least. It was a small venue, very intimate and close to the stage. Frankie left us waiting a bit but in the end, at about 9.45 PM he appeared on stage. He launched into heckling a few people on the front row, as you do, but it was fairly good-humoured.
His routine was as I would have imagined: very funny and brutally cynical. It was a pity that we had heard quite a few of his biting one-liners in his appearances on television but I had a really good night and, at times, laughed my head off. One of his gags was about how to go about meeting women. He said he’d taken to dressing up his three-year old daughter in a pink T-shirt with the text saying: ‘My mummy is dead and my father is single.’
He didn’t carry on for very long. His show lasted for about an hour which I thought wasn’t that impressive. Although he cracked me up on several occasions perhaps I had to admit that his comedy does have its limitations. Who knows? Perhaps he just needs to develop his comedic touches more.
We had a good night out and made our way back to the hotel on the Tube, which, even at that time of night, was very busy. London; what a town!
Oh No, Yoko!
I heard Yoko Ono as a guest on Radio Four's Desert Island Discs this morning. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the programme, it's a nice twee sort of thing where a guest gets to choose and play some favourite songs which they wouldn't want to be without if they were to be sent to a hypothetical desert island.
In the introduction, the presenter said that Yoko One had long been reviled for having wrecked the Beatles, and taking away John Lennon from these shores, and for generally being a bit of a cow. I don't know. I don't much care for her 'art', and she always seems very supercilious but that in itself is no crime.
The presenter also said that Paul McCartney had recently declared that he'd changed his mind about her. Whereas he was once regarded her as a very cold sort of woman he now thought she was probably all right. He had added that perhaps it was just that unlike most other people she was more determined to be herself.
That last bit interested me. There must be a fine line between knowing your own mind and having little doubt about what you want out of life and how to get it, and being thought of as absolutely selfish and uncaring. Is there a point where one merges into the other?
Self-assuredness and a take-charge attitude will often scare off lesser mortals with all of their fears and doubts and many insecurities (that's you and me, perhaps?).
I will never be a 'fan' of Yoko Ono, but this intriguing description of her by Paul McCartney certainly made me think.
Kind regards,
Richard van der Draay