A DAY IN MY LIFE

Weekdays

I work as a sub-editor on a morning newspaper, so my hours are a little unusual.

 

My day starts at around 11 am with a bowl of porridge and chopped apricots.

 

After that I write until it’s time to get ready for work. Often I lose track of time, and it’s a case of grabbing a sandwich on the way out the door rather than making a proper meal. That’s no great loss given the fact that my cooking skills don’t extend too far beyond tuna salad, tuna and pasta, or tuna and baked potato. The worst of it is, I don’t even particularly like tuna. Well, not any more. It's a classic bachelor existence--it was five years before I bought a kettle, and I still don't own an iron.

 

I’m lucky to have a job I enjoy doing, and to work with some people who are friends as well as colleagues. The job involves putting together a couple of local news pages: deciding what stories and photographs to use and where to put them. After that, it’s a case of editing the stories down to the required size—hopefully improving the wording if necessary—and checking any facts that don’t ring true; then writing headings and captions.

 

The shift ends shortly before 1am. I live in a village on the other side of the river from the city I work in, and have a run home over the lovely Tay Road Bridge. In total it’s about a four-mile run; a great way to relax and unwind as well as keep reasonably fit.

 

After a soak in a hot bath, and a stretching session, I crash out with some fresh orange, a sandwich, and 40 minutes or so of TV. My favourite shows are West Wing and Seinfeld. I also have to confess a liking for Diagnosis Murder and the old Twilight Zones and Outer Limits.

 

After that it’s time for bed. I read for thirty minutes or so before turning out the light, then drift off to sleep around 3 am with a Raymond Chandler audio book or the BBC World service on the radio--or just thinking about the scenes I'll be writing the next day.

 

 

Weekends

 

I get my weekly shopping in as early as possible, then work until mid-afternoon.

 

There’s a lovely farm road nearby, and I usually go out for a run along it on my days off. If it’s an exceptionally nice day I sometimes run all the way out to one of my favourite places in the world—a pine forest and the dunes beyond. I wind up on a windswept North Sea beach, a place so quiet you can imagine you’re the first person in the world, or the last, or anyone in between.

 

When I get home I make something to eat, then work through until around 9 pm

 

After that I settle down in front of the fire with a cold beer, a bar of dark chocolate and an old movie. My DVD collection includes a few modern thrillers and Meg Ryan rom-coms, but mainly it’s older films—to me they have a charm that’s missing now, and they tell of an age that seems gentler and more decent in so many ways. I love almost anything with Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant and Dana Andrews. I never tire of watching movies like Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Casablanca and In a Lonely Place; or Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Notorious, Rebecca and North by North-West.

 

 

Holidays

 

I’m lucky enough to get six weeks' holidays a year. I take them one at a time and spread them out so that I’m never more than a couple of months away from the next trip.

 

I pack everything I need into a daypack that’s small enough to count as cabin luggage. My camera is a simple mechanical one with just a 50mm lens and doesn’t take up much room, and I only take enough clothes for two days (and wash them out in the hotel room each night). There’s a real freedom about travelling like that, and it makes it so much easier to move from place to place.

 

I try to make the most of every moment on my trips, and come the end of each day I usually feel I’ve walked myself into the ground. To me the most satisfying feeling in the world is to sit in a café or restaurant at the end of such a day knowing there are some words in my notebook and some shots in my camera that weren’t there at the start of the day, and to look at a streetmap of places that have become unforgettable memories rather than just names.

 

My only regret is that the trips have been made alone, and that the enjoyment has been shared with words and pictures rather than conversation, smiles and laughter.

 

All in all it's a truly wonderful life, though, and I don't take a single moment of it for granted.