Time flies when you always listen to the same thing

THIS month, staff of this newspaper and its sister papers and websites will have been working from home for 18 months. The transfer to home working happened almost overnight. That in itself is remarkable because if it had been planned it would have taken months of consultation and an awful lot of talk about how it would never work. Well, love it or hate it, there is no doubt that, thanks to the wonders of technology we already had but never really used, it has worked. Some have thrived, some have found it suits their lifestyles, some have found it hard. In the main, it has been a positive move for me. I like not really having to ‘get ready’ for work, love not having to travel, and have taken full advantage of the more relaxed dress code. The dogs are happier, I can run them round the block in the middle of the day, and I definitely don’t feel bad about having the cricket on. If I miss anything it is the atmosphere and, most of all, the laughter that old-style newsrooms used to generate. I am going back a few years, but there was a day when newsrooms were messy, irreverent, smoky places that had an awful lot of staff who sometimes didn’t have an awful lot to do. That ‘resource’ created ‘space’ that wasn’t entirely spent in the pub and occasionally was creative. One of the great creators in those spaces was my old friend and long-term colleague, William Telford, one of the very best reporters I have been lucky to work with, and a man with a hilarious sense of humour. One of the most fun series of articles we came up with in the old days featured a slew of lookee-likees – individuals who thought, or had been told, that they looked like celebrities. There were those who really did look like someone famous, and they were funny. And then there were those who thought they looked like someone famous, and really didn’t. They were even funnier. Happy days. William’s wit and humour are not completely lost to colleagues in these home-based days, as our now business editor has taken to carefully placing a different but relevant piece of rock or literature memorabilia behind him for his daily virtual meetings. The other day his backdrop featured one of my favourite Dylan albums, prompting a conversation about Dylan’s remarkable portfolio. “I have every Dylan album on vinyl up until Under A Red Sky – after that he has been rubbish,” I boasted. “Ha, ha. That was nearly 30 years ago,” he replied. I was taken aback. Thirty years ago? That couldn’t be right. In my head, Red Sky was one of Dylan’s new albums, but a quick search revealed Telford to be spoton. This week I was stopped in my tracks again by news that another favourite, Metallica’s Black Album, was celebrating its 30th anniversary. Again, to me, this was a late album. Mixed with the news that the sure-tobe dreadful new album from Abba will be their first for 40 years, these facts left me wondering. A scan through my music collection, both vinyl and digital, confirmed my suspicion that I basically stopped listening to new music in 1990. I was 23! This was a full decade before marriage and children and all of those things that could be used as some sort of excuse for this almost complete shut-down of musical discovery. Ever since, I have been listening to the same things over and over again, and on the rare occasions I have tried to break out and listen to ‘new stuff’ I have always found it tuneless, and, umm, a bit noisy. Now the cricket’s finished, I really ought to try to listen to something new – but I’ll probably just drop this Doctor Hook album on again.