Writer’s block – part I

Our newsroom was a cacophony of keyboards pressing, sub-editors’ effing and jeffing because copy wasn’t coming through quickly enough for the next edition and phones ringing with people telling their stories to us.

We worked through a gigantic haze of smoke as journos puffed their way through fag after fag in order to deliver the news on time. I didn’t smoke, but was told by my first Editor – Pete Clarke (nicknamed Bomber because of his love of old planes) – that the sign of a good reporter was one with a messy desk because it meant they had a creative mind. At least I think that’s what he said…

Along with large desktop monitors, which took up a good half of our workspace, we all had notebooks, pencils, pens, a desk phone (no mobiles in those days), ems rulers if we were being trained up as subs and a large spike precariously positioned atop a piece of wood. This is where we spiked any press release and black and white prints out of photos which had been used. I’ve yet to hear of any reporter ever hospitalised by their spike, but they were sadly banned and binned by Health & Safety.

Notebooks were kept with our names scribbled on the front, along with the dates we started and finished with each one, for five years in case anything was needed in court.

A stream of people came into our front offices at the Northampton Mercury to place ads in our papers and tell us stories they hoped we would run. There were a few notorious Northampton figures who were regulars at telling cock and bull stories and any new trainee would be sent down to interview them. We’d time how long it would take them to realise they’d been set up.

Ask any newspaper reporter if they’ve been roped into certain situations and it’s likely they’ll regale you with all kind of tales about what their Editor asked them to do. We’d often be used – in silhouette or blurred out – for photos when they needed someone to illustrate a particular story, only to be recognised the next day when the paper came out readers saying “oh I saw you in the Chron last night as a hooker picking up that kerb crawler”, aka your fellow reporter.

I’d always draw the line at two things though. Having my fortune told and being regressed, the latter having become fashionable in the 90s. Rosie Rushton, my fellow features writer, had braved that and was recorded speaking perfect French and recounting her ‘past life’ as a nun. She couldn’t speak French when she woke up.

It was around 1994 when my plan was scuppered and my palm was ‘borrowed’ for a photo of a fortune teller who’d been interviewed by one of my colleagues. The fortune teller immediately began reading my palm, telling me I’d never win the Lottery, yet I had a best seller in my hand but wouldn’t write it til later in life.

I forgot to ask her what age that would be. Now I have writer’s block about the pressure of a best seller yet to materialise from my hand and a pile of unopened journals people have gifted me over 25 years. Would it have happened had I been furloughed? I wonder, while buying my weekly Lotto.