Karen, Richard, and Matt are professional relations: business partners who are also family members. This issue, Richard interviews his wife Karen about their home office, with editing by their son Matt.

“it was important to be able to switch off from work”

Richard: We work from a home office. Is that part of the house or separate?

Karen: It’s separate, but only a short walk from our front door. As a couple running a business from home, we both felt it was important to be able to switch off from work. Locking the office and moving into the house has made this easy for us.

Richard: Did we need to get planning approval?

Karen: Technically, it would have been allowed under permitted development – but as our house is in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, we had to submit an application. Luckily, apart from a debate over how many windows we could have, the application went smoothly.

Richard: And did the construction go smoothly?

Karen: I remember it was a freezing cold week in February, and none of the cordless tools would hold their charge for very long, so our sitting room was full of extension cables and charger packs…

Richard: Were you happy with the outcome?

Karen: Really pleased. It’s a light, airy space to work in, and there’s room to store all of our files, as well as recording equipment. We worked out how to convert it into a recording studio, which made it even more useful.

Richard: We’ve now used the office for several years. With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would change?

Karen: I can’t think of anything – although I’m sure we’d use the space if we’d gone for a bigger size.

Richard: Yes, we tend to expand to fill available space.

Is the office used every day?

Karen: Every work day – which for us isn’t necessarily Monday to Friday.

There’s more to this interview. Buy us a cuppa on Ko-fi to support our work, and you can read the unabridged versions of this and every Professional Relations interview.

Doing business on a sick planet

Happy launch week 🎉

After months of writing, shooting, editing, uploading and testing, our ultimate environmental education course is now accepting students.

You can get a free taster to decide if it’s for you. Then, the full course is £77 per person until Tuesday 23 June; after that it goes up to £127. So beat the queue and save yourself £50!

This is a self guided, self paced course, where you can save your progress and return to the material in your own time.

By the time you complete the course, you’ll know why you should think about the environment when you make business decisions – and how thinking this way helps your business.

Get a taste or enroll now and save £50.

• 23-24 June, Excel, London: Dad will be at Reset Connect, the sustainability and net zero event for business, investors and innovators. Reply to this email if you’d like to organise a meeting.

• “Any normal person suffering this degree of violence, both physical and mental, would have crumbled before the halfway point”: Dad reviewed Godstorm by Solitaire Townsend.

• Lasting inspirations alumna Avery Alder is having a bad time; buy things from her?

• Everyone have fun at UK Games Expo!

I Need A Miracle

I’ve applied for funding! Thank you again, friends and family who generously looked over the application and gave me excellent advice. Some time in the next 11 weeks, I should find out whether we can have some National Lottery money to put towards making season 2.

In the meantime, I’m back to gearing up for crowdfunding in September. Even if the Arts Council give us the thumbs up, we still need to find at least 10% of the project budget from other sources, like crowdfunding; and chances are it’ll be a thumbs down, in which case crowdfunding will have to do more of the work. In other words, we’ll be asking you for more money.

I’ve booked in a few appearances on other people’s podcasts to help get the word out (including a very fun one that I already recorded – reply to this email if you want to know which show it was 👀), and now I need to put together all the stuff for the crowdfunding page: story, video, graphics, and (most importantly and excitingly!) pledge tiers, rewards, and stretch goals.

Oh, hey – I haven’t announced this anywhere yet, have I? Assuming we can fund production, I Need A Miracle season 2 will include episodes by:

• Ella Watts (Camlann, Doctor Who: Redacted)

• Rhys Lawton (Paddleboat)

• Michelle Kelly (Beyond the Lighthouse)

• Fiona K. T. Howat (What Am I Rolling?)

• Edil Hampsen (Professor Pandemonium’s Peculiar Panoply)

• Upcoming writers B. Z. Norohna and Bel Lazarus

And that’s just the people I’m allowed to talk about. I really want to see what prayers they’re dreaming up, and I hope you do too.

Merely Roleplayers

While we’re recording and producing the epic Vigil: The Long Night, Mum’s animated some of the ensemble’s favourite scenes from Sherrydown past, starting with this one set in the half-built Abbey Links golf course clubhouse.

It’s been a challenge getting animation software designed for corporate explainer videos to handle centaurs and axe-chucking, but I think they’re turning out fun!

Another one of these just came out, featuring a car chase even stupider than that one from Knives Out. Go watch it on Youtube.

Gaze

It could not have been a comfortable pose to hold, but he showed no inclination to shift. He had made of himself an installation.

There are two new chapters of Gaze since last issue: Studio, chapter 2; and Bridge, chapter 3.

Karen highlights Elly Curshen:

Elly Curshen (@ellypear)’s posts are full of ideas and inspiration for quick simple recipes that minimise food waste. She’s changed the way I go about storing and using up leftovers.