Writing copy is a glamorous business. Few could resist the glamour and glitz that surrounds the application of SMS for power line outage monitoring. There can be little that matches the adrenaline rush to be had from crafting 500 words to promote executive recruitment in the telecoms business. Imagine trying to contain yourself once you have devised a strap line for the market leaders in loss-adjustment.

Oh yes, the world of commercial copy is a jungle where only the strong and the ruthless survive. The cut and thrust in this trade makes an Olympic fencing tournament look like a garden party. Some days I’ve been so excited I’ve had to make toast.

I’m not saying that writing advertising and commercial editorial copy prepares you for anything in life, but you do build up a range of trivia about an awful lot of subjects. This is, of course, mostly useless and more often than not, quickly out of date, but every so often something happens where having written an advert or a press release saves time and trouble in unexpected ways.

There are, of course, many thousands of commercial copy writers who specialise in their particular niche. This seems mostly to involve being consigned to an ‘office’ that doubles as the garden shed where many hours are spent ploughing through microscopically detailed papers about bolts and sprockets, valves and circuits, wedding cakes, golf trolleys or fishing flies. This is the realm of the uber-nerd and it can be surprisingly lucrative, which is just as well, but it is altogether too tedious for my restless mind. Doing software one day and soft furnishings the next might seem utterly ridiculous to some, but to me it’s the only way to live.

I don’t just do ’stuff’, though ’stuff’ is quite challenging. As often as not it is about putting concepts and ideas into words - sometimes to help get past a blank sheet of paper or give shape to a new service. Where copy meets marketing. Could that be carpeting? Perhaps not.