My favourite story of the week was the news that old-fashioned typewriters have returned to The Times newspaper. The sound of fingers frantically bashing away at manual typewriters is like music to the ears of old hacks like me. The memory of it transports me straight back to Fleet Street in the 1980s. But this time round the typewriters will only be heard at The Times, not seen. The sound of clattering ...keep reading
After reading scores of tributes to the wonderful Clarissa Dickson Wright, who died last week, I was stunned to discover that my daughter and her friends had never heard of her. It seems like no time at all since former barrister Clarissa and her trusty sidekick Jennifer Paterson were entertaining us all with their brilliant Two Fat Ladies TV series. When I checked though, I discovered that 20 years have ...keep reading
“Enough about saintly working mothers. What about me? I’m a working dad.” That’s the headline emblazoned across the front page of Times 2 today, trailing a piece by Hugo Rifkind that sticks up for working fathers. His gist is that society isn’t treating fathers equally. “… when she gets up many hours before going to work to deal with our children’s poos and pees and frankly unreasonable moonlit demands for ...keep reading
It’s 20 years since I threw caution to the wind and swapped a steady (ish) job and salary for the precarious life of a freelance. But right at the start, I made a solemn promise – and it’s one I’ve never broken. I would not, I told myself, ever sneak out of my office to watch daytime TV. If I did it once, I knew I’d be doomed. But daytime ...keep reading
My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw the email. “Hi Emma,” it read. “We know quite a few places to do dirt jumping. Are you an experienced rider or are you just beginning to get into the sport?” For the uninitiated, dirt jumping is a sport that involves cycling at top speed down a ramp, leaping high into the air, maybe doing a couple of twirls ...keep reading
Few people, if any, have a good word to say about journalists these days. As the Leveson inquiry reveals shocking new details about deception, trickery and intrusion in our newspapers, it’s hardly surprising that us hacks are regarded as the lowest of the low. Yet most journalists I’ve come across are honest, hard-working and dedicated to their profession. I don’t know anyone who’s hacked a phone or tricked someone into ...keep reading