After flying out to Bermuda and getting published in the Bermuda Sun and The Royal Gazette, Fiona came home to carve out a career in writing. But she needs to ‘sound off’ about the secretarial temping agencies which have helped keep the wolf from the door during the transition period…

Temping is never usually regarded as one of life’s greatest vocations and it certainly isn’t mine. However, it sometimes becomes necessary to temp in order to foot the household bills and it provides you with some financial buoyancy while you seek a full-time job.

Temping extricates you from the main mechanics of office politics and more importantly, it allows you flexibility, freedom and time to pursue outside office interests. Furthermore, you can generally choose your own holiday periods, which some agencies will pay for if you are prepared to work hard for a certain number of months.

In the past, I have been able to opt for working full-time and part-time hours. For me, it has proven the only way that I have been able to concentrate on writing.

Temping has freed me from the shackles of dull routines so often experienced in working environments, by permitting me to move within company departments. It has also provided me with a great deal of writing material.

For the past year I have been working abroad as a PA and an arts reporter. After a year of living an expensive expatriate lifestyle in Bermuda, I decided to return to the UK.

My main reason for travelling to a remote island in the Atlantic in the first place, was to take a year out to write. I had found it virtually impossible to find a job as a writer in this country and always had to settle for secretarial work in order to fund my writing projects.

My plan was to try and get my freelance articles published in Bermuda and New York, in the hope that after a year I could return to the UK with a good portfolio of work under my belt. I saw an alluring advertisement in The Times enticing temporary secretaries to fly out to Bermuda. Needless to say, I was on the next aeroplane faster than a rat up a drainpipe.

Read on…