Seems like an eternity since I’ve done some proper posting – and that will probably stay that way until the new mac turns up. Anyway, the world certainly hasn’t been a quiet place (as someone pointed out to me the other day, the credit crunch seems to have started more or less to the day that I stopped having to pay back credit cards. Take from that what you will…)
Anyway…went to Florida and came back. With the exception of work email – and how crap are Blackberries for anything past replying to an email? – I did 10 days cold turkey from all things digital and I can’t say I missed it too much. Part of that I put down to the fact that I had good company with me and if you have that with you, you don’t hunt for it online (also, slept more each day than I do in the UK). Anyway, Florida was lovely, people were lovely, would move if anyone was offering a $90,000 salary plus the paperwork (an Oracle job for the wife would be handy too).
Most embarassing moment of the whole trip: standing in the bookshop for Kennedy Space Centre in Orlando Airport and realizing there were about 2 (out of 40) books I could buy as I already had the rest of them.
The Daily Record/Herald’s Calum Macdonald died and that was one of those bolts from the blue. There are journalists and friends I have who defy medical science by drawing breath each day, but Calum’s death wasn’t expected by too many. I don’t know if I have the right to call him a friend – we were certainly friendly to each other when we both worked in the Daily Record building and we shared the odd pint in the Copycat and elsewhere, but like a lot of journalism relationships past the pub and work/jobs we never saw much of each other (I have journalist friends who for years I only ever saw at T in the Park), but journalism’s that kind of profession. What I do know is this: he was one of the nicest, cheeriest people I ever met and was definitely taken away from us too soon. If there’s an afterlife, I’m sure he’s in the good place.
For those who don’t know, his service is on Saturday, October 18 at Glasgow University.
Shaun Milne was tagged with having moved to the dark side. I would have cracked the gag that he’s moved to the green side with Planet Ink’s new eco-friendly publication, but it’s a question that never seems to go away – I still get asked it, even though I’m an account director at a PR company. I think in this day and age, the point to stress is that you are a communicator and some of the tools a person would use as a journalist can be handy elsewhere – something many journalists fail to notice or realise.
And the Ayrshire Bard, the People’s Poet himself has gone an grabbed a Twitter account. That’s right, if you want to ask Robert Burns a question ahead of his 250th birthday or even just receive a couple of lines of his poetry a day, then you can find him at www.twitter.com/ayrshirebard. (What? If it’s good enough for NASA and the Phoenix, it’s good enough for Burns.)
Work: Bloody hectic, no time to say anything else. Still better to be busy than quiet…