May 5th 2003 - May 11th 2003
Sunday Bras
Saturday Gibson
Friday Taking stick
Thursday Mid-tryst
Wednesday Bender
Tuesday Sophie
Monday Ego booze
Sunday 11th May 2003
Text conversation at 3 am this morning:
A: Hundreds of women in bras marching along Embankment
B: Damn! I knew your night would turn out better than mine
Saturday 10th May 2003
Neuromancer fans will be delighted to discover that William Gibson keeps a blog; be quick to check it out though, because he says he's starting a new book soon and - hmmmm - he can't write and keep a blog at the same time.
Friday 9th May 2003
I'm surreptitiously keeping an ever-expanding list of things I've seen and done that increasingly mark me out as a member of an older generation: unremarkable events or objects that made perfect sense at the time but now look irretrievably rusted over with nostalgia. (Energen rolls, anybody? Aertex shirts?)
I recently added a visit I once made to a newspaper office in Fleet Street, back in the days when I used to buy advertising space for a living. Given that I now work at a newspaper myself now, I'm ashamed to say that I don't recall much about the visit - I suspect there was a substantial amount of traditional newspaper hospitality dispensed before it started.
The point that has only just struck me, however, is that it was taken for granted that the high point of the tour was to descend into the bowels of the building at about 9 o'clock in time to watch the giant presses start to roll.You don't get that these days: offhand, I can't think of any national newspaper that still prints its papers on the same premises as they are written, and the pencils on journalists desks no longer begin their telltale quiver as the deadline for the first edition passes.
So it was especially eerie to be quietly tip-tapping away at the office the other evening and suddenly hear a very loud rhythmic clanging rising up from the floor below. Even stranger to realise that I was probably the only staff member on my floor to understand what was going on.
In the days when Fleet Street actually produced papers in Fleet Street, when type was set by hand (one line at a time on a weighty metal rule or 'stick') compositors still regarded themselves as the heirs to a long craft tradition, governed by the intricate rules and rituals of the guild.
One of their most-respected rituals was the traditional farewell given to any compositor who reached retirement age, who, having accepted his leaving card and the fruits of the whip-round, was then - quite literally - "banged-out" of the building, serenaded by a clanging chorus of his colleagues, bashing their heavy rules against any substantial piece of metal they could find. It was a noisy way to mark an exit; surrounded by the thunder of the massive presses, it had to be.
I didn't venture downstairs to see what twenty-first century equivalents they'd managed to come up with, but it sounded a hell of a lot more substantial than mousemats on monitors.Maybe they still keep their sticks about them, tucked away in a bottom drawer: "Will the last compositor to leave the building please leave his stick with security."
Thursday 8th May 2003
Good news and bad news for fifty-somethings in recent weeks.
The good news (and, ok, it's not that good) is that Tony Blair has at least passed the half-century mark. I can't tell you how galling it has been to have been governed by a man in his forties...
The bad news (and, face it, after fifty it's pretty much all bad news) is the revelation that Adam Faith apparently died mid-tryst. Thereby decreasing one's own slim chances of a shag yet still further, as slim youths stare across a crowded room and think "No way I'm going home with that that, he might pop his clogs on me..."
Wednesday 7th May 2003
C'mon, name names
Tuesday 6th May 2003
Sophie's niche
Monday 5th May 2003
Hooray: Salam Pax is back (after a fashion).
Closer to home, so is my favourite Swede - equally bloody but unbowed. Nice to have you back Marcus. (You might want to archive Marcus's long post against the next time somebody asks you to explain what blogging is for..) (The concept of 'ego booze' is equally useful...)
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