‘SEO sucks,’ I say to Welsh Sue from my makeshift desk in a shack on the north Kent coast.

‘Tough,’ says Sue from her lofty music studio in Penarth. ‘Are you having fun with your keywords?’

I groan. It’s fast becoming clear that Google is a very greedy Master and needs me to constantly cram keywords into everything I write, which I really resent.

I have also been initiated into the world of Semrush, whose Magic Tools can tell me how often my chosen keywords are Googled and therefore if I am pleasing the greedy Master or not.

I’ve even been assigned a virtual assistant, Maria, who is improbably young with long tousled dark hair. Her job, I assume, is to entice me into coughing up for a monthly subscription to Semrush at the end of my 7 day free trial, by describing all the other exciting stuff it can offer me.

I tell Maria via the chat box, that I should be OK as I only need Magic Tools, and she replies that she is there to answer any questions I may have. I toy with posing some queries that have been bugging me for some time, such as how do those monarch butterflies manage to fly 3000 miles from Mexico to north America and do they sleep en route? And if consciousness really does exist outside of our brains, is it in everything?

The race is on – as I Semrush my way through all the keywords and phrases for the theatre and creative writing rooms in the House, such as ‘online playwriting courses’, (with Alecky Blythe and Anton Burge) and ‘online creative writing course’ (with novelist Elizabeth Fremantle) and ‘How to write sketch comedy’ (with Saul Boyer).

On the plus side, I have discovered the delights of Unsplash, a photo library, where the pictures are free if you give the photographer a credit in your blog/social media posts etc. I love trawling through pictures - in fact, my ‘career’ began - after a very shaky start* - in the picture department of a German pop magazine (random, I know), so it feels very familiar. But with Unsplash I can choose any photo I want, like, for example, a ferret, instead of being limited to photos of German pop bands like Tic Tac Toe and die Fantaschtischen Vier. 

There are, of course, dozens of other keywords I need to check before my free trial is over, but I find my mind drifting back to the days of the German pop magazine, when keywords were a hazy cloud on the horizon – and when my days were filled with asking popsters what they ate for breakfast and at what age they’d lost their virginity. Hey ho.

*It’s probably not a great idea to pitch up for your first day at a new job, still hallucinating from a fistful of pharmaceuticals, then have to take a little lie down under the desk for most of the afternoon because you haven’t slept for 36 hours…

In the House of Talents we have over 30 established writers, playwrights, musicians, actors, performers, mindfulness coaches as well as a yoga teacher, a home cook and a publisher. They are offering creative online courses ranging from public speaking, performing and acting to puppet-making, Kundalini yoga and reiki. Coaches charge just £5 for a group class or workshop and we give 10 % of the proceeds to our chosen charities, which include Greenpeace, Mind and Save the Children.

Instagram: @houseoftalentsuk

Facebook: /houseoftalents.uk/