Material Biography
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Nick Farrell - JOURNALIST
Brief Material Biography
When you are an occultist, the other life, that of your material existence, takes on a shadow quality. If you are stupid, that shadow is forgotten, along with the ability to pay the bills. You become like one of those chaos magicians who tell you they know the secrets of the universe, but cannot pay the electricity bills. However if you are just as silly you can let that shadow world rule your occult life too. You become too busy for magic work, too stressed to look to the infinite. This biography is more mundane and less interesting.
In the shadow world I was born. My family still went to New Zealand . My first memory was of my dog being run over by a truck driver who had a plaster over his forehead.
I went to a kindergarten for gifted tots. It wasn't because I was particularly gifted, although I could read a lot better than most, it was just the nearest one for my mother to drop me off at.
I went to Epuni School http://www.epuni.school.nz/LBFrame.htm which was terrible. I got into trouble. I was suspended for arranging an infamous lunch swopping racket where kids traded sandwiches they didn't like and one day in a proto-shamanic experience I was told by the trees not to go there again. I was five, the trees were older, it made sense. My parents took me to another school.
We moved around a fair bit but finally found a home in Paekakariki http://www.epuni.school.nz/LBFrame.htm which is on the Kapiti Coast . It was a great place to be a child and grow up. With parks, beach and hills to roam in, I was rarely bored.
At school http://www.epuni.school.nz/LBFrame.htm I didn't really fit in. I didn't like sport and in New Zealand that is like saying you don't like eating. But also I liked attention and being obvious. That, coupled with asthma meant that I was bullied a bit of the time. That stopped when I went to Kapiti College http://www.kapiticollege.school.nz/. It was the last authoritarian middle class school left. Bullies were not tolerated and if you were clever you could avoid being caned, which I managed to do. Coincidently the school colours were the same as Gryffindor in Harry Potter.
Generally I found it easy, although I had what is defined as not particularly distinguished. I also developed my need for attention into a love of drama and acting. I did a lot of amateur dramatics for Kapiti Players http://www.kapitiplayhouse.co.nz/aboutus.html , which was a local rep group. I was also had the lead role in the school rock opera, where I sang and acted.
I also was fanatically interested in wargaming and a weird group called Alf's Imperial Army http://paradise.gen.nz/~simeon/alfs/ which involved silly, public dramatic stunts with 'battles' staged where people hit each other with rolled up news papers.
After a brief stint working for the Department of Social Welfare, I got into the Wellington Polytechnic School of Journalism class of 1984. I worked in Daily newspapers in Palmerston North http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatustandard/?source=evening-standard and did a year working as PR officer for PostBank. I moved to Hawkes Bay where I worked for three years on the Napier Daily Telegraph http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc06Cycl-t1-body1-d2-d18-d6.html.
Generally my time as a journalist in New Zealand was not that good, I don’t think I developed into anything really useful until I got to the UK .
In 1989 I moved to the UK . The idea was to be there for two years and attend occult workshops. I got a job at the Slough Express http://www.britishpapers.co.uk/england-se/slough-south-bucks-express/ and after a year a recession hit and was restructured out of the company.
Trying to make the best of it, I decided that maybe it was time not to be a journalist any more. There followed a year of unemployment and joke jobs. I tried to sell American travel during the Gulf War, and houses in the property slump and ended up working in Windsor Castle http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page557.asp as a computer operator. I was fired after a few weeks for what I was told was having a sense of humour. Apparently her Majesty was not amused, I asked them to put their reasons in writing, but they wouldn't.
I found a job working for the Slough Observer http://www.thisisslough.com/ and got married to Anna. It was there that I started to really understand what being a journalist was all about. I also started getting recognised for my abilities to do things. After reaching the dizzy heights of Deputy Editor and doing shifts for the tabloids on the side, I packed it all in and worked in the IT press. This was because it was a lot easier and earned me more money. Unfortunately I had a bad habit. After years of having to write stories very fast I found I could fill the magazine by myself. Since they only ever wanted six stories from me a week I found myself bored and at odds with the management who felt I should be doing something even if they couldn’t think of anything. I decided to go freelance where if I worked hard I would get more money for it. This decision ended my first marriage.
However workwise it was sensible and I got a lot of work for magazines mostly inside the VNU Business Publishing stable. The best time I had was in Network Week where I was the news editor and for a while the acting editor. It was a great team to work with and I had a lot of fun.
In 2003 I moved to Bulgaria to get married to Didi. I was bored with the UK and really nothing was happening fast. I worked regular shifts with different online magazines including the Inquirer www.theinquirer.net, Fudzilla www.fudzilla.com and, more recently, the IT Examiner http://www.itexaminer.com. This is faster with much of my work carried out in the morning, which gives me more time to write my books and papers.
The pressure to do more occult work and travel in connection with it meant that my second marriage didn't work long term and I ended up first back in the UK and finally moved to Rome at the end of 2008.
Visit my other biography sections:
Brief Journalistic Biography -
Nick Farrell the Hack!
Brief Magical Biography
Further articles in the Author section
Fuerther articles in the Magician section
