grumpyf1

This is a bit weird. I'm not a newspaper columnist any more. After submitting my foldy phones piece last week, I received an email saying The Mail are rearranging how they do things. Going forward, there will be a weekly "On the podium" section on a Monday, where a particular topic will be discussed. One week will be local MPs giving their viewpoint, the next the current columnists. Word count will be around 250-300 words (I was writing 400, originally 500, with that full-page period at 1000), so greatly reduced. Disappointingly, I had to ask if they wanted a final column from me for this week, before the new section starts on Monday. I was hoping I'd have a chance to say a kind of goodbye after seven years of penning my column. But they didn't. So, just like that, I'm no longer a columnist. In case they said yes, I wrote a farewell piece, so, for old times sake, here it is: One last Friday feeling Seven years ago, I was wondering what to write...

The final full-page... Things happen fast sometimes, don't they? Just three days after writing the joy of six , I got an email asking me to call the new editor at The Mail. When we eventually caught up, I was mid-way through my new commute home. Apparently, they want to include more news, and are therefore cutting down on the full-page outings. So I'm back to a column, but at 400 words, not even the 500 of my original 'Thank grumpy it's Friday" outing that lasted five and a half years. In the end, I had just a 15 week run as a full page and in both The Mail and News & Star. I'm now back to just appearing in The Mail, too.  It's hard not to view it negatively - I thought it was going pretty well. The additional pressure was tough though - by the time I got in from work, had something to eat and watched a bit of TV, I spent three evenings a week writing. After that, 400 is a breeze. So. Back to the future, then. Ah, well. At least I can sa...

Last Friday, the 4th of May, marked a significant anniversary for me. As my full page, 305th, newspaper outing was published in Cumbria's The Mail and News and Star, it was six years exactly since my first "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column in the North West Evening Mail, as it was back then. Amazing. I've mentioned before about the journey to the first column, through the paper's Big Blogger contest, and how I very nearly packed it in at the start of this year, only to be offered the full page. I said I'd review how it was going after a few months, but a stressful house move throughout this period means my perspective on all that is somewhat skewed - it's hard to make the time to write, and even to research or concentrate, when your life is all about legal paperwork, bewilderment, boxes and bubblewrap. To add to the confusion, I recently discovered that my original contact at the paper has left. So far, no-one has been in touch about who I no...

Cheerio! Thank grumpy it's Friday is no more. After 291 columns (292 if you count the potentially libellous one that didn't get published), 145500 words, and 6 years, my days of writing 500 words a week for publication in The Mail have come to an end. In case you hadn't guessed, this is the big news I've been mentioning for a couple of months now. Having found myself, with increasing regularity, sat in front of a blank screen with the submission deadline screaming at me, I spent the latter part of last years worried I was drying up. This also got me questioning if I was actually any good any more. With little in the way of feedback from either the paper, or it's readers, I finally decided I'd call it a day at the end of the year, and sent an email to the paper explaining at the start of November. Column 289 would be my last outing. The reply was somewhat startling. They were just about to offer me a full page. Not just in the Mail. In the News ...

It’s the age of self-publicity. With easy access to the web, we can all get our scribblings read by a potentially enormous audience. But does that make us all ‘writers’? It has been my honour to pen (if you can call it that when it involves fat fingers and a keyboard) this newspaper column for almost two years now. By my calculations, that means you’ve had to endure the alarming experience of more than 50,000 of our language’s finest words being haphazardly assembled into sentences, before appearing in your newspaper underneath a frightening picture of me, seemingly sternly watching you to make sure you read it. Read it! I can only apologise. Whilst I accept that that makes me a Columnist, I’m still embarrassed when anyone suggests that I am therefore, by extension, also a Writer. Awkward, that. Whilst Douglas Adams’ genius certainly classes him as “An artist of the written word” (as one definition has it), and Bill Shakespeare “Contributes significantly to the cultural cont...