May 16 2006

Long time no blog. Hope my legion of fans!! haven't missed me too much. This time I mean business. Have had a lot going on workwise, and less and less time for family, so poor old blog has gone on back-burner - or whatever is the cyberspace equivalent.

had to give my head a shake and realise that blogs and their ilk are the future and neglecting it should be the same as not doing page three in the newspaper, for instance.

anyway....

That Reds Cup win was astonishing. We had prepared solidly inbterms of our planning, for a Reds win or even a Reds defeat. what we couldn';t envisage was an Istanbul Part two.

Saturday night was a blizzard of phone calls and texts between myself, the sports editor, the circulation manager, the production director and the MD. How many pages? What time should we print?> How many extra copies.

The results was a fantastic early morning souvenir edition on Monday which some joker was offering for £5 on e-bay BEFORE it was even printed. Like his style.

Squad of my journalists gave up their day off on Sundaty to join me in the office. It was hard work, but as always with these things, great fun. Real buzz in the office.

Key to the production operation was Gary Bainbridge, the design editor. Poor sod is a die-hard blue. He had to plough through page after page of Reds glory.

I looked at the front poage about 11pm and he's already written his suggested headline: LUCKY REDS SCRAPE ANOTHER DRAW.

Always hard to keep both sides of the city happy at times like this.

Check out my daily videocasts on this site. I just talk a bit about what's in the paper and our view of events. Let me know how awful I am. Great face for radio.

Morgan has started school. Seems to be loving it. Hope they can knocjk her into shape. tried to tell her off last week - she was banging a cup on the table and it was going to break.

'Stop it,' I yelled. She just fixed me with a look and said: 'I'm warning you.' Where did you here that from?' I splutttered. She didn't answer. But it must have been from me. A thousand times.

Speak soon.

Ali Machray