Prophet Of Loss

I guess you never forget the first paper you worked for... and it looks like that paper hasn't forgotten me entirely.

It was great to see a mention of "Like A Flower" on the website of the Northamptonshire Telegraph, the place where I started to learn my journalistic craft a few decades ago.

Of course, in those days (and up until recently) it was the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph. But now it appears only weekly.

I still remember my first day in the newsroom and being taken on a tour of the place by the chief reporter. He led me past the sub-editors' desk and then through the double doors to the typesetting machines.

"One day," he told me, over the noise of the machines, "they say all this will be done by computers. And when that happens, it will all be over."

As far as the romance of working on newspapers is concerned, I'm afraid he was right.