This blog is taking a holiday break in the warmth of California and I don't expect to post much, if anything, before January 9. So I wish a merry Christmas to everyone, including the trolls. For the record, since I started this blog in May 2006, I have posted 3,146 entries and received 4,355 comments. And I understand that 80,000 unique users accessed the blog in the course of the year. I've no idea whether this is good or bad, or even interesting.
But blogging has been one of the most stimulating experiences of my journalistic career, which stretches back almost 44 years to the Barking & Dagenham Advertiser. It was a poorly-printed broadsheet that, like so many newspaper titles, has since been subsumed by a rival.
In 1963, we hammered out stories on clattering Underwood typewriters. Then, after a batch of copy was subbed, it was my job to take the package - by bus, until I passed my driving test - to Ilford station. I went down to the platform to hand it to the train guard for delivery to Chelmsford station. After being picked up and taken to the print-works, it was set in type so that galleys were lined up ready for Friday mornings when the pages were made up.
The printed papers were trucked the 26 miles from Chelmsford to Barking on Friday afternoons and then a group of drivers took over. To earn extra money I often helped to deliver car-loads to the shops.
How different from my typing this and, with a click of a single key, publishing it for the whole world to access within a second...
