Fucking newspapers, fucking execs and a few more choice observations. If you are of a sensitive dispostion, do the honourable thing and fuck off.

I’m in a bad mood, my wife and the two little kiddiwinks have buggered off somewhere (Elsie has football training, I think), it’s 7.15 at night, no one (i.e. my wife) has mentioned what we are doing about supper — should I prepare something for myself or should I wait until they return whenever they are due to return? — I’ve had two modest glasses of wine, but more to the point I’m at the end of my third glass, there’s no more and I don’t want to drink any spirits or anything stronger than wine, so I thought I might rant a little on my blog.
First complaint: who the bloody hell reads this? I had three acknowledged readers, and the relevant gubbins here which tells me how many (if you want technical chapter and verse, you’re on your own) tells me I still have three, but only two are registered in another area of the technical gubbins, and Mr B. Mc. is observing radio silence. Actually, I think that is because he is having rather a rough time finding another job, to which it is relevant to add that were my shifts at the Mail to end, I would be up shit creek, not only without a paddle but without a fucking canoe. So he has my sympathy and good wishes. That last is relevant because — and it would be too, too tedious to go into any depth here but it involves a new page layout system, a changeover from Mac to PCs, me for the past three weeks doing on my own which on a good day is done by two of us — I have had two rather high-profile bust-ups (strictly ‘busts-up’, but anyone reading this who wants to make exactly that point can go fuck themselves) with a chap who was once the Mail’s production editor, then retired, was then recalled on an expensive consultancy basis to see in the new system and who is to geekdom what the Pope is to the Roman Catholic church. I actually walked off the winner on both occasions, but that means nothing. In the whacky world of the Mail, which is to the feudal system what the Pope is to the Roman Catholic church, such behaviour from the poor bloody infantry — I am still a casual, a chap hired by the day and thus a hack in the strict sense of the word — is at best utterly unacceptable and at worst a hanging offence. The only good aspect to it all is that I usually get on with the chap, his geeky nature notwithstanding, and neither he nor I hold a grudge.
So on to other matters: for the past three weeks I have, almost literally, although obviously not quite literally, been working my bollocks off. A week last Wednesday, when I had the car in London, I was due to drive to Bristol and see Ken, the chap rather closer to death’s door than yours truly unless yours truly falls under a bus at some point over the coming weeks. I usually finish at just after 6pm on Wednesdays, but a week last Wednesday, I was still fucking around with this new system until 8.15, which meant that rather than get to Ken’s by 8.45, I didn’t get there until just after 11pm. Mercifully, he was asleep and hadn’t noticed that I was over two hours late.
This Wednesday I didn’t have the car, but was due to catch a train from Paddington at 7.45. That was late enough for me to hang around for at least an hour after I am due to finish and still get to the station on time. I didn’t go to the gym in the morning, but started work on my pages at 9.15 to make sure everything was done and dusted in good time. It was: I had done all the work I had to do, bar making the chief sub’s marks, by 6.15. It should have been a doddle, but it wasn’t. She didn’t start reading the last two pages, the letters’ pages, until just before 7pm and when, at 7.10pm, I announced that I would have to go to catch my train and that someone else would have to do the marks, it was greeted in much the same way the British public would greet the news that someone had raped the Queen. My name was mud. Bugger that over the past three weeks I had stayed on for several hours longer than I am being paid for, all that was noticed that I had the temerity to ensure I wouldn’t miss my train.
All of you out there who, having read this blog so far, still — still — feel that newspapers are populated by professionals and gentleman: you should, and I hope will, be sectioned.