Surrey Life Editor's Blog

Signing out

As mentioned earlier, I'm out of the office now until Monday, so I'm afraid there won't be any more entries until then.

I'm leaving things in the capable hands of my right hand man, Matt, who I'm sure will do a sterling job in my absence. 

In the meantime, have a good week - and think of me having to do "workshops" and other such similar horrors at the editors' conference...

ZZZzzzzz....

Had a bit of a late one last night as went to see Reverend & The Makers at The Roundhouse, in Chalk Farm, so feeling a tad jaded today (and yes okay, a teensy bit hung over...)

Mind you, I have got an excuse, as it turned out to be a rather extraordinary evening.

The band announced at the end of the gig that they were going to carry on outside - and they duly did, standing on top of a car at the side of the road.

Needless to say, pandemonium ensued as several hundred people stampeded out of the venue and onto the street while the traffic ground to a complete halt amid frenetic beeping of horns.

Obviously, we couldn't leave while all that was going on, so by the time I eventually got to bed it was after 2am. Hmmm...

Nevermind, at least I can console myself that we have the planning & review meeting at Gatwick this afternoon - an intense, four to five hour meeting that entails me doing lots of talking and trying to sound vaguely intelligent. Oh, good...

Anyway, better crack on... I'm out of the office now til next Monday, as it's also our big annual editors' conference up in Stratford, so got soooo much to do...

When I get back, it will already be deadline week, and it's also our biggest issue of the year - gulp!.

In the meantime, might just sneak out and get myself a fried egg sandwich...

The Rich List

Please excuse me if I sound a little incoherent today, but I have spent the last two days checking through the Surrey Rich List 2008, and frankly my head is spinning (what is more, I'm still only up to No.42).

Don't get me wrong, it's an absolutely gripping read (we have some very interesting new entries this year!), and compiled by the writer of the Sunday Times Rich List, it's the real deal - the definitive list of the 50 richest people in the county.

It's just that editing it is probably the biggest and most challenging job of the year for the following reasons... 

a) It’s over 10,000 words long 

b) Some of the copy is about rather confusing financial stuff (so it's my job to make sure everyone can understand it )

c) It’s often very contentious so we have to make sure we're 100% watertight with our facts to protect us legally

d) Getting pictures is an absolute nightmare

e) It’s extremely unpopular with most of the people in it, who prefer you not to know how much money they've made - in fact one of my fellow editors was even issued with death threats when they did theirs last year… hmmmm!!

Anyway, as my dad always used to say, less talking, more doing... So, back to No.43... 

PS A very happy birthday to our new sales guru Callum Sims (aka Frodo...).. 

The big screen

I am writing to you today from a rather swanky, flat screen monitor, which is all quite exciting given that my previous one can only be described as something out of the dark ages.

For reasons that I know not of, everyone else in the office received a brand-new silver flat screen months ago, whereas I was left to bumble along with my enormous black plastic, TV style monitor (circa 1987).

When I say big, I mean big too - it must have been close to 3ft deep - and it also had a flicker for good measure.

Anyway, it's finally gone off to IT heaven and I now have a crystal clear, non-glare screen that looks a bit like something out of Star Trek (many thanks to Ade and Damo for setting it all up for me).

Celebrity gossip

One of the many funny things about this job is having to deal with random celebrities.

Normally, they're absolutely fine, but occasionally they're not.

For example, I wish I could tell you about the person from a popular Saturday night TV show who recently threatened to send "his people" round when he was unhappy about us publishing an interview with his ex-girlfriend.

On a more lighthearted note, I'd also love to share with you the story of the well-known soap star who was once sick in my dustbin after one too many glasses of white wine.

In order to avoid being hauled before Guildford Crown Court, however (at least by the man at the centre of the first incident anyway), I think it would probably be prudent not to say any more.

The only reason I mention all this is because, at the other end of the scale, I just wanted to say how absolutely lovely newsreader Nicholas Owen is.

We're currently in the throws of setting up an interview with the Reigate-based journalist and I can honestly say he's been an absolute joy to work with.

In spite of his extraordinarily busy schedule (he's rarely off our screens at the moment what with reading the news and then Countdown as well), he has always been happy to make time for us, has gone out of his way to accomodate all our many outlandish requests in terms of photos etc and, thankfully, also has a great sense of humour.

If only they were all like that...

March mag in the shops!

The new magazine arrived in our office this morning - always a bit of a tense moment for me personally.

On the one hand, it's really exciting to see the finished product in all its shiny glory, but on the other, it's also fairly terrifying wondering if you've made any blunders.

My biggest fear is spelling something wrong on the cover - that's the kind of thing that can keep you awake at night - but the possibilities are endless - printing the same page twice, a typo in a headline, having a story running off the end of a page...

In theory, none of this should happen because of our rigorous proofing system - I see the page first and then, when I'm happy with everything, it gets proofed by another two people, before coming back to me for a final check.

However, no system is foolproof and experience has taught me that if something can go wrong it will.

Anyway, assuming we haven't made any of the nightmarish errors listed above, the new magazine should be a cracking read, absolutely packed with good stuff, so look out for it in the shops from today. 

Welcome to the madhouse

A big welcome to the latest addition to Surrey Life, Callum Sims, who joined the sales team this morning.

First days are always a bit scary; and in my case frequently disastrous.

In my first job in newspapers, at the now defunct Epsom & Sutton Herald series (where incidentally Piers Morgan also started out), I remember proudly filing my first feature only to press the wrong button and send it into oblivion.

Needless to say, the news editor was not best pleased.

Fast forward more years than I care to remember and my first day at Surrey Life, and I find myself locked in the toilet (don't ask). 

Anyway, Callum, I'm sure you'll fare much better than I did (just as long as you get through the initiation programme, of course, which entails passing the coffee-making test and buying us all cakes...). 

All quiet on the western front

It's been a relatively quiet day today so not a great deal to report at the moment - which is just as well really given that our next issue is set to be the biggest one ever.

With that in mind, I think we were all just glad to get our heads down and get on with it.    

The reason it's such a big issue is because the April edition is traditionally our best selling of the year (touch wood!), largely because we publish our annual Surrey Life Rich List, in which we reveal the county's top 50 millionaires.

Written by Philip Beresford of Sunday Times Rich List fame, it carries a lot of credibility and is always a riveting read (though, saying that, we were somewhat perplexed when our new No.1, Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, shuffled off his mortal coil yesterday...).

Anyway, I won't reveal any more as yet - you'll just have to wait til the mag comes out in a month's time!

Meanwhile, you've only got a couple of days left to pick up the February edition, as the new March magazine will be hitting the shops on Wednesday.

That in itself is quite exciting, as we've revamped quite a few sections and packed a lot more into the mag - I look forward to hearing what you think.  

A window of opportunity

As I think I've probably mentioned before, we work in a rather bizarre looking office that most closely resembles an upside down ship.

It's quite hard to describe, but its most striking feature is an enormous wooden roof, some 30ft high.

It's not the most salubrious office in the world, and as seems to be the case in most publishing places, it's also quite messy - in fact, someone who arrived here for a meeting this morning noticably balked when they walked in, saying, "this isn't quite what I expected the office of a glossy magazine to look like..." 

Nevertheless, it does have a certain sort of charm about it, and I've always been rather attached to the place.

However, working in such a weird building does come with its problems, not least when the mechanical windows in the roof suddenly get stuck on 'open', as happened a few days ago.

Needless to say, it's been quite parky in here over the last week, and every time the wind gets up, it's a case of hanging on to everything for dear life .

Thankfully, salvation arrived this morning in the form of the window cleaners, bless them, who through some feat of pure genius managed to manoevre their folding ladder up the stairs, round the corner and through the door, before finally forcing the windows shut manually.

For some reason, though, getting the ladder out again seemed to prove rather more complicated so they ended up having to lower it out the window and down on to our driveway.

Suffice to say, it must have looked rather strange to any passing drivers/pedestrians... So, if you saw an enormous ladder being lowered down from the sky onto Croydon Road this morning, now you know why.

Mildly hysterical

I knew I was tempting fate in my last entry...

"My colleague Matt and I will both be in tomorrow for a last proofing extravaganza, but then I think we're almost there - hoorah! All being well, we should be able to put the magazine to bed by Monday afternoon."

Ha - if only! Due to technical problems of epic proportions, we finally got the mag to the printers at about 10pm last night - after what turned out to be a 14 hour deadline day.

As a result, we've all been a bit bleary-eyed today, not to mention mildly hysterical and at times verging on the delirious.

In fact, I even invented a new word when I expressed concern about people "trampeding" all over bluebells...

Anyway, it's reached the point now where I'm actually starting to hallucinate so I think it's time to call it a night.

Putting the mag to bed (and hopefully myself)

Apologies for the lack of entries over the last couple of days but come deadline week there's rarely a moment to spare.

This one has been worse than usual actually (for reasons I won't bore you with), hence finding myself still in the office at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night.

Anyway, at least it's been a productive day and it's shaping up to be a cracking issue I think.

My colleague Matt and I will both be in tomorrow for a last proofing extravaganza, but then I think we're almost there - hoorah!

All being well, we should be able to put the magazine to bed by Monday afternoon and I, meanwhile, will hopefully be put to bed in the next hour (after a large glass of Sauvignon and possibly a Chinese takeaway...)

In the thick of it

It's shaping up to be another monumentally hectic deadline week so just a super quick one today...

To get straight to the point, on behalf of everyone at Surrey Life, many congratulations to group editor Jon Keeble whose wife, Lynne, gave birth to a baby girl yesterday! 

We all wish you all the very best (and good luck with those nappies...) 

Right, back to deadline week...

Fuming...

There is always a temptation to use blogs such as this one to generally sound off about stuff - but that would me most unprofessional so... Paaargh, what the hell – I am going to make an exception today because, frankly, I am fuming...

Right, here's a thing... If I said to you the words "National Trust", what would you think of? Probably something along the lines of a national organisation that looks after our important buildings? In fact, the mission statement on their website goes even further than that: "The National Trust protects special places in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, for ever, for everyone," it proudly proclaims.

So forgive me if I'm being a bit dense, but one could be forgiven for assuming they might welcome a bit of free publicity, the sort that would entice more people to visit those “special places” and therefore help preserve them for future generations?

Well, you might think so, but you'd be wrong. Here's what happened today...

There I was doing my monthly hunt for a cover shot, and given that we are running a major feature in our March edition on great ideas for the Easter weekend, including a whole section on stuff going on at National Trust properties, I thought it might be nice to use a picture of one of their properties on the cover.

Ah, I know, I thought to myself, Clandon Park – a particularly stunning National Trust property and the venue for a fine Easter egg hunt – that would be perfect. So out of courtesy, I rang the National Trust to let them know we were planning on sending a photographer down to get a nice shot of the exterior – oh, and because the daffodils weren't quite out yet, he'd buy a bunch, just so we could put them in the foreground to create a nice spring picture.

The response from the National Trust? Firstly, we would have to PAY if we wanted to take a picture of the house, and secondly, under no circumstances were we allowed to use a bunch of daffodils because “it would not be a true representation and it goes against the brand.”

Goes against the brand? What, to make the picture look like a nice spring picture with some daffodils in the foreground? Exactly how the house and garden would look in March when the mag comes out?

And don’t get me started on the payment thing. We give them the front cover of our mag – which will be seen by well over 40,000 people – and a feature encouraging people to go and visit their properties, and we pay them for the privilege?

As a journalist of over ten years, I’ve worked with the National Trust on hundreds of features before and never have I encountered the likes of this before. I can only assume it’s a new, and very worrying, directive from high above.

To put it bluntly, it’s a dangerous move. Historically, the regional press have been great supporters of the National Trust, but if they start making it impossible for us to do our jobs, they are going to lose a very important resource.

I won’t ramble on any more, but suffice to say, I will be writing a fairly strong letter about this – just as soon as I’ve found another cover that is…