Has someone tested the water in here?

Posted Sunday, November 19, 2006, 3:28 PM by Lonely Planet

The musings of Errol Hunt, Commissioning Editor.....

This morning started indistinct and cloudy, but soon cleared to a brilliant clarity. It put me in mind of a nice copperplate font, such as 32 or even 33b. My work day started, as always, by reviewing yesterday's achievements: a nice paragraph I'd written on opening hours for the SW China author brief. I'm enjoying writing the brief, although my trusty old Remington portable has a broken 'c' key, which has meant respelling words using 'q' instead ('qolour and flair'...) and excising any mention of China itself.

I took down my Oxford Shorter (meanings by chronology; 1954 ed) to look up a word that had been puzzling me lately (oscine, a suborder of passerine birdlife) and took a short moment for a contemplative pipe. (I'm smoking a cheeky Tongan mild weed, it has a nice draw-thru, although the cartos say it stings their eyes). Annoyingly, my smoke was too soon interrupted: the eyes on my miniature Tony Wheeler bust flashing red, the signal for an incoming telex. I tore the strip of paper from the machine and read the message: a project manager awaiting blurb copy that was just a few weeks past their ridiculously strict deadline. I angrily tapped out a response via the intra-office morse system, letting them know I was on the job but not yet in mind to put ink to paper. I see blurbs as a form of poetry. I need to be in the right frame of mind...

Labels: Inside Lonely Planet

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