For reasons which I may go into at another time, our local NHS Trust refuse to tell us the sex of our baby, so my wife and I have taken to calling it the Spawn. Don't look at me like that! It's a term of endearment, honestly, and not in anyway inspired by the sort of lurid comic books I read in the 1970s - "I gave birth to Satan's spawn!" "My child, the spawn of evil!" and the like... That's just wrong.
So we've less than a fortnight to go, and yes, it's very exciting, but I've also got to consider crisis management plans if Mrs A goes into labour on deadline day, and just how we're going to get a paper out during Jubilee week with all those bloody bank holidays.
Fortunately, my team of plucky reporters take it all in their stride, and are happy to do whatever it takes to ensure there's a Herts Advertiser on the streets every Thursday, even if the Editor's more focused on timing contractions than writing his next leader...
Editing a paper is like juggling the plates from an antique dinner service whilst also cooking a roast dinner and debating the pros and cons of the first-past-the-post system with a politics professor. It requires you to focus on a lot of different tasks at the exact same time, while also planning what you're doing three weeks from now and dealing with the consequences of the last few weeks simultaneously.
But I can do that. I've been in this job long enough to multi-task, and I think I'm pretty good at it. How I cope with these demands after three hours' sleep is another matter altogether.
So today, like every day in the newsroom, involves reacting to breaking news, responding to complaints and comments from this week's paper, and laying out pages for the next.
To liven things up a bit, this afternoon we're hosting the drivetime show for Radio Verulam, who will be broadcasting from our offices in St Albans city centre. Expect an update later...
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