Mostly books, sometimes other bits.

24th August...

10 Things That Journalists Do...

1. Swear. All the time. Case in point, Monday 3.10pm: 'Where the b*llocking fu*k is my *anking Rossendale lead? GRAHAM! Where is it?'

2. Drink possibly dangerous amounts of coffee. Offer to make coffee every third minute, especially early in the morning, creating a situation where they find themselves bouncing off the walls and talking very fast by 9.45am. Sometimes offer to make coffee and then get distracted (by the Rossendale lead, see above) and leave fellow journo in a state of caffeine dependent flux, unsure whether they should make their own coffee or not.

3. Ask random people on the phone how they are/ how their day has been/ where they have just been on holiday. We don't care. We just want to make you talk.

4. Search the internet in a desperate hunt for nibs. End up trawling the websites of the Pendle Ornithologists Club, the Darwen Limestone Society and the East Lancashire Beekeepers Association.

5. Make more coffee.

6. Say things like, 'Quick fix me a Darwen lead, and I'll chase up the letter about the Smitty column while you find me ten nibs and give Shelia a call; tell her to fax me a new press pic across.'

7. Laugh at the word 'nibs'.

8. Spend around 95% of the working day in editorial meetings. Leave said editorial meetings with less idea of what might end up in the issue than you did before.

9. Start dreading exam results season in approximately mid-June.

10. Develop an email checking obsession. Forty times an hour is about right.

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