Post #4: Nothing to Do With Fashion  At All

So I haven’t posted for a while. My boss wasn’t very pleased. What did he say to coax me into writing something? He didn’t threaten to fire me: oh no, far worse than that. He told me I might end up in the pages of Media Guardian. “They watch to see who keeps up with their blogs, you know.”

I already knew that journos slag off other journos for being so hubristic as to have a blog, then not bothering to update it. There is a feeling that most newspapers (Guardian excepted, which is why it can afford to be smug) came very, very late to the www, and are all now frantically trying to establish their internet presence with flashy websites and reams of content. Of course, said content is necessarily generated by existing staff, who already have full-time jobs providing content for their employers’ newspapers. In these days of brutal staff cuts, rare is the journo who ever has a spare half hour to knock off a blog or three. This is why I haven’t blogged for three weeks. I’m not lazy. I’m overworked.

I wonder if we will all regret how hard we worked, when we’re tooling around the old folk’s home in wheelchairs, clutching sore stomachs wizened by ulcers. Was it worth it? Did we enjoy the one-bedroom flat in Hackney that we sold our souls to procure? And our children: did they turn out okay under the childminder’s gaze? And our parents: when they dandled us on their knees as babies, did they expect their twilight years would be punctuated by far fewer visits than their boundless love deserved?

Working too hard makes me maudlin. So I’m going down the pub.