Blast, forgot to listen to myself on Radio Wales the other night so I have no idea if they cleverly edited my pearls of wisdom to make me sound like a fool.
Can't have been too bad as someone else from the same station has phoned to ask me to join their rota of regular newspaper reviewers. I'll loook forward to that, apart from the early starts - the first review on their breakfast show is at 6.40AM.
One question I was asked was whether or not I was being really honest about our day at the office - especially when it goes wrong. So in answer to that, I will be very candid about a host of foul-ups of late.
I've already mentioned the first crossword cock-up. A couple of days after that we managed to lose one of the clues. On Wednesday this week we managed to put the wrong race card in. And today, we have run a series of crosswords with the right clues and the right grids - but no numbers on the grids.
I'm not best pleased.
So first of all, more apologies - this is totally unacceptable. Second, we are drawing up a checklist - as thorough as the kind they have on aeroplanes before they take off. We are going through everything in the paper that is regular material - such as puzzles and x-words, imagining everything that can go wrong, noting down everything that needs to be in place, and introducing a rule that the page cannot be sent to the press until the checklist has been completed.
Just be assured that when things go wrong which annoy you, they annoy me too.
A lot.
Anyway, to the title of today's blog. We now have two journalists trained in shooting and editing videos. We have got state-of the-art digital kit and editing software.
But the chap in charge of the kit requisition has forgotten to order the computer upgrades we need to run the editing kit. I could nip into PC World and grab it, but oh no, the whole thing has got to be sent to a project board to go through a great big approval process. No idea how long this will take so all we can do in the meantime is shoot some footage and stare at it.
Sometimes I wish we adopted the JFDI business method - just *@@%£* do it.
On a happier note our writer David Powell and his wife are celebrating the arrival of twins - a boy and girl. It put a smile of the face of everyone in the office.
Enjoy the weekend!
