Cheers to Lidl bosses if they breathe new life into the old Aberdeen Journals site on the Lang Stracht.
How traumatic it was for me in 2021 when the bulldozers moved in.
Even now I’m near tears when I pass the huge open wound which was the heart of my life for nearly 40 years.
In the summer of 1970, just after I got the job with the EE, personnel manager Sandy Waugh drove me from Broad Street up to Mastrick to give me a highly exciting tour of the still-under-construction building.
It couldn’t have been further from the ancient, dark, rabbit-warren of Broad Street.
Huge, open-plan editorial hall, plush offices upstairs, a canteen which stayed open until 2am for the night shift.
Come January 1971, about 1,100 staff moved in and what an immense range of trades and talents they represented; those brilliant linotype operators, printers, advertising reps (remember Tele-Ads?) circulation and publicity staff, drivers, mechanics, an army of secretaries for the raft of bosses.
In editorial, reporters, sub-editors, feature writers, photographers, sports guys, proof-readers, copy telephonists – like my wonderful cartoonist, Helen.
Working life was great in those days. Even though we were on evening papers, we got an hour-and-a-half for lunch – plenty time to drive up to The Cocket Hat for a full meal.
The news editor actually went home for his ‘tatties’, no matter fit big news story was breaking.
We even got to charge expenses for lunch every day if we didn’t get a full free 90-minutes ‘doon toon’ while covering the courts or cooncil.
Wonderful colleagues
Natch – we aye charged for oor pie-and-pint in The City Bar. Oh, the laughs in the old Police Court, wi’ a’ the minor offenders, including ‘feekie drinkers’, judged by Baillies – upgraded al’ cooncillors.
Like when the al’ biddie in the dock, asked to point oot the wifie fa’ed heid-butted her in the East Neuk bar, confidently pointed to smart-dressed me, on the press bench, instead o’ the bedraggled al’ butter in the dock.
Probably the greatest delight of my years up by was meeting a huge range of wonderful colleagues – different ages from different decades, many with whom I’m still in touch.
By contrast, the darkest time was during the year-long strike at the end of the 80s, when more than 100 journalists were sacked and I lost forever some precious friendships.
But the hilarious times will always shine through. Like the boss who regularly cut his fingernails with a huge pair of scissors during meetings with his team.
The faces we all made as he snipped; the hysteria and disgust we had to hide when, one day, a particularly bouncy nail skitter-skattered across the table right on onto my lap.
The things that went so badly wrong. The Valentine’s Day Counter cake recipe with a mistakenly quadrupled sugar measurement. We’d to dispatch cleaners to de-syrup a frantic Ellon reader’s gunged-up oven – and issue an emergency caution in the next edition!
And when the P&J Tall Ships supplement was a free pass into the harbour – except the presses couldn’t run it. Pande-flaming-monium.
The EE readers’ holiday to Rotterdam when the secretary acting as tour guide and chaperone forgot her passport. Desperate Mo had to organise a motorcyclist to deliver it to Hull afore the boat sailed. He made it. Just another eventful afternoon at my beloved Aberdeen Journals.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press and Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970
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