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I have been at PCW for five years. Five years and two days if we’re going to be pedantic, but as the actual anniversary was bank holiday Monday and office was busy yesterday we marked the occasion today with lunch at Masala Zone.

As Clive and myself are the only two to have worked on the mag throughout the whole of that time, we got to talking about how many people have been there since I started. Counting only full-time employees who have worked in editorial, and looking no higher than editor level I counted 43 people, passing through a team that has never been more than about 12 people at any time. Around half are still writing, and a quarter have left the industry altogether.

I got quite misty-eyed.

Tubed and walked to SE1 for Bobby’s leaving do. It’s the second time I’ve waved him goodbye and wished him well for the future so I have no doubt that we’ll still be in touch for a considerable time yet. There was a good turnout, and I ended up chatting to Kathryn, Mark and Ja for an hour or so about bad TV.

Mark and I left just after eight and took a Jubilee line train out to London Bridge for the ATI party. We got vaguely lost, but by the time we arrived the venue was starting to look vaguely familiar. It was a large archway beneath the railway lines, filled with smoke, camouflage netting and PR people in army gear.

By the door there was a hairdresser cutting hair.

These last few days I’ve been thinking of taking mine down to a number 1 all over, but the idea of a haircut at a press do just feels far too stingy to take consider. There’s also the issue of hair down your back all the way home, which would be particularly unpleasant with the tube being the temperature it is at the moment.

I didn’t stay long. I got talking to Ian about film scripts and we ended up leaving together. He was heading back to London Bridge, so we walked together and made a pact to arrange lunch in the next few weeks.

We have made pacts like that before, but they rarely come off. This time the note will have to be more permanent than mental.

Three interesting stories from CNN:

Quoting an Associated Press story about how employees on the bottling line at the Jim Beam distillery are only allowed to take four toilet breaks a day: ‘…some of the 100 affected employees [at the Jim Beam Bourbon distillery] have urinated on themselves because they were afraid to leave the [bottling] line. Some wear protective undergarments … “It’s a shame when you feel you have the need to go to the bathroom, but you ask yourself, ‘Do I soil myself or do I protect my job?”‘ Kelley said.’

Quoting Reuters story about the youngest mother in history, who had her first period aged two and a half, became pregnant at four years and gave birth aged five.

And finally, on the technology front, Sony has announced it is finally going to stop producing Betamax video recorders. So much for it being a dead format.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 28th, 2002 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.