Every Friday I write an editorial for our weekly departmental newsletter (I moved sideways into newsletter editing when I gave up scheduling a couple of years ago – less stressful and more suited to my particular talents. I’m happy with the change although I had to give up my office – a sad loss – I hate open plan). It’s usually just me wiffling on about what happened to me during my working week, but I often put a tiny bit about world events just to appear relevant. When I’m done, I run it past my much younger co editor to make sure I haven’t made any dumb mistakes and also to ensure it isn’t too offensive. As an example, here is an excerpt from today’s editorial:
“It hasn’t been a good week for Terry Jones, who shuffled off this mortal coil on Tuesday, or for China, that has been battling another zoonotic virus. What is it about China that makes so many horrible viruses originate from there? Possibly it could be their penchant for exotic foodstuffs. Honestly, if God had wanted us to eat chicken feet or pigs arteries, why would He have invented pizza?? Best of luck to them in their endeavours, anyway, and I hope someone invents a snappy nickname for this illness soon because “novel Wuhan coronavirus” is just too long.”
Perfect, no? Apparently not. The corrections she came back with were ‘novel’ for ‘horrible’ (as in horrible viruses); and ‘They’ for ‘He’ (as in why would He have invented). I don’t like the changes, but I always agree to them because Millennials are a closed book to me and I’m too afraid of getting into trouble. I’m glad I don’t have to have my blog posts approved by somebody else (although when in doubt I do run them past my daughters, but that’s mostly because they appear in my stories so often).