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July 20, 2007
Silly season
The schools are breaking up and it's like the middle of winter outside - pitch black and raining cats and dogs - it must be the summer holidays.
This weekend promises to be the great getaway and many face the prospect of hanging around for hours in airport terminals or sitting in queues of traffic on the nation's motorways being asked the familar question ' how long before we get there.'
Luckily with my kids having grown up and flown the nest I can plan my breaks well away from school holidays and travel in less stressful circumstances - and generally it's cheaper.
The start of the school summer holidays also usually heralds what is know as the 'silly season' for newspaper as the news dries up and we resort to running stories about giant sunflowers and heatwaves - some chance on both counts this year.
In recent years we have not really endured the 'silly season' at the Gazette and late July and August have been particularly busy times on the news front.
However, the last few weeks have been relatively quiet on the story front and I am gearing myself up for some 'silly season' stories over the next few weeks, although I am sure the newsdesk will prove me wrong.
Yesterday I held a meeting with my fellow editors on our west London and Bucks titles and at the very time that the schools are breaking up we were discussing plans for the highly popular first day at school supplements that we run in our papers in late September.
It seems strange to be looking so far ahead but putting these supplements together is something of a military operation and past experience has told me that they need to be planned out several months in advance.
One of the other topics of conversation, on a less serious note, was the chances of our Ealing editor Shuz Azam seeing any play on his annual visit to Lord's today for the Test match.
The general opinion was that he would be spending the best part of the day in the bar - and looking at the weather right now I think we may have all been right!
Posted by aseal at July 20, 2007 7:25 AM