I’m glad to be back.
Sixteen nights in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary – taking in Christmas and Hogmany – will take its toll on any man but at least I missed 16 days of snow and freezing cold.
But my stay in hospital also took in another important anniversary – it was 55 years ago (January 2 1955) that I walked into the Dar es Salaam office of the Tanganyika Standard to start my life as a reporter.
I was so keen that I had left the Prince of Wales School in Nairobi having taught myself Pitman’s shorthand in the spare time I managed to find at the school. I still regard that as one of my greatest achievements and it is the shorthand which I used thereafter in the offices of the Galloway Gazette in Newton Stewart, the Fifeshire Advertiser in Kirkcaldy, the East African Standard in Nairobi, the Cambridge Evening News and The Scotsman in Edinburgh.
I was at The Scotsman for 23 years, ending up as Business Editor, before joining the world of PR while continuing to write for a number of publications including The Scotsman.
I still write a weekly column for The Scotsman, am chairman of a PR company, am co-founder of a commercial property website newspaper and have written a couple of books.
So I am lucky to say that I am still an active journalist after 55 years.
Are there many more around with that record?
Should there be some public acknowledgement of that achievement? A gong of some sort? Some sort of sponsorship from Google or Microsoft?
OK, I am chancing my arm – but I would not claim that is the first time in the last 55 years.
