(Horribly late posting the column this week. Irish copy is not on the Sunday Times website this week and it took me this long to get around to posting it.)
It was shortly after I roared at some people to get off their folding stools, stand up and make some room for the rest of us, [...]
Now that I am no longer protected by a vast and almost impenetrable corporate firewall, I’m getting a lot more spam. The spammers have taken to misspelling naughty words to get around filters. In quieter moments, I have taken to entertaining myself by deciphering their coded missives.
In recent days, I’ve received emails promising pictures of various things: a [...]
As I was feeling a bit sorry for myself yesterday (evidently - see below), I decided to get up early and go for a brisk walk to get the blood flowing and the brain cells going. It worked. Hotfooting it around Douglas at half eight in the morning, in the midst of gangs of people [...]
I’m known for being a bit talkative. So when I said I was going to freelance from home, a lot of people gave me odd looks. “Won’t you go mad in the house all day on your own?” they wondered. “You’ll go crazy with no-one to talk to,” they affirmed. I told them I’d be [...]
I know I’m not alone in being irked by textspeak, with its odd contractions - gr8, 2nite and so on. Interestingly, journalists don’t tend to use it. I’ve noticed a lot of my colleagues don’t, anyway. They also tend to use commas and apostrophes assiduously when texting.
An interesting post here explains that kids are now [...]
Dossing when I was supposed to be working, I came across this quote. Fantastic.
“A newspaper is not the place to go to see people actually earning a living, though journalists like to pretend they never stop sweating over a hot typewriter. It is much more like a brothel - short, rushed bouts of really enjoyable activity [...]
Adam’s post earlier this week about the importance of cultivating contacts reminded me of the first piece of advice we were ever given as wet-behind-the-ear journalism students - “Never throw away a number”. That and “Learn to type”.
I can’t tell you how much I love this sort of corny, feelgood, ‘hometown hero’ story. I know I shouldn’t, and I know I wouldn’t if it was some kid running a Londis in Ballivor, but schmaltzy American news stories get me every time.
“Hope. It’s what’s on special this week at the Main St Market in [...]
How not to succeed as a door-to-door uPVC guttering salesman:
“Hallo miss. Is de boss inside?”
The Sunday Times
I owe someone an apology. It might even be you. Have you wondered for years how exactly the right rear lights on your car were smashed one quiet Sunday evening about four years ago in UCD, when there wasn’t another car parked within 100 metres of you? Well I’m sorry, but it was [...]
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