The nine stages of the newspaper columnist's life

Stage one is INDIVIDUALISM: either as a working hack or some sort of pundit, you are identified as having something to say and the stylistic arsenal to say it well. So you get a column.

Stage two is ECCENTRICITY: Loveable, preferably, but the whiff of sulphurous, ranting rancour can have its appeal. You're special, some readers turn first to your outpourings. Alas, you're beginning to appreciate your own specialness a tad too much.

Stage three is EGOCENTRICITY: You've never been that easy a person to deal with; now you start making whimsical decisions about content, attacking sub-editors physically and in print should they mess with your deathless prose, demanding serious Adobe Photoshop work on your byline picture and crucially, more money. Amazingly, your needs are pandered to.

Stage four is UBIQUITY: The occasional request to review the papers on radio has turned into a flood. You now won't go anywhere near a radio studio without taxis being booked by the hapless researcher, and a substantial fee agreed with your recently-acquired agent. You are affectionately known to said researcher and colleagues as "a gob on a stick", a "media tart" or far worse. TV projects are discussed with dozens of independent production companies. One gets commissioned. You get your teeth fixed, go on a diet and consider using Botox and/or Regaine.

Stage five is NARCISSISM: You are supremely confident that all your readers want to know about is you and your opinions. You write about how the world impinges on you, and you rejoice in the certainty that you are not only right on every subject, but that even the smallest details of your experience are worth writing about. In fact, your eye for detail is, you feel, one of your great strengths. You bought a pencil the other day - what a wonderful sensation it was, the graphite slipping silkily over hand-made paper. You break up with your wife and abandon your children - how movingly you describe the sensation of being alone, then of pursuing and wooing a lissome 19-year old coke fiend model/singer/DJ. How beautifully you analyse your inner turmoil, confident that thousands of men will identify with you, and thousands of women want to sympathy-shag you. Only you matter. It's your duty as a columnist, your duty to your readers, to tell all. All about you. And if others suffer by their portrayal in your column - well, didn't Graham Greene say that every true writer has a chip of ice in their heart? And you are a true writer. Oh yes.

Stage six is SOLIPSISM: Really, there's not much point in writing about anyone or anything else but yourself and how you feel about yourself. That's what people are buying the newspaper for. Not that you read it, apart from your own column. Strange how those telly and radio invitations have begun drying up. You've stopped going out. Food gets delivered. The lady who does has stopped doing. The editor keeps wanting to talk to you, but you never return his calls on principle.

Stage seven is ONANISM: This is really the fulfilment of a condition which has been developing since stage three. You keep writing your column, but unknown to you, it's no longer published. You never see the paper, don't do anything but eBay on the net, don't check your bank statements. Finally, the house is repossessed, you're declared bankrupt and you end up selling the Big Issue and sleeping in a hostel.

Stage eight is REDEMPTION: you start blogging, using an internet cafe; Canongate offer you a book deal. Your memoir ("Hacked Off") is a worldwide success. George Clooney buys the film rights. You get offered a column, but you insist that blogging is the future. You move to tax-free Ireland and die of cirrhosis. To provide for your family (you've spent all your royalties on Powers and Murphys) you agree to write one last series of columns, and your terminal decline is described weekly in a column called "Liverish". It gains your highest readership yet, considering it is published only in the Caithness Courier.

Stage nine: HALLUCINATION. It was all a daydream. Too much absinthe at breakfast. There's still the SWRI reports and the fish prices to do. Fire up that Amstrad 8256, mate! Get to work!

The end of the columnist?

Journalism is like blogging, only you get paid. Though my Google Adsense feature has made me, oh, seven of your US dollars in the past three, err...months.
I used to be a journalist, and on occasion still am. I have been a regular columnist, paid (sometimes handsomely) for The Scotsman, The SundayHerald, Scotland on Sunday, the Daily and Sunday Express, South African Sunday Life, Big Issue in Scotland, Northwords Magazine, New Statesman Scotland and several more I have conveniently forgotten. And the Shetland Times.
My last vestige of weekly columnisation was dispensed with this week, following the final, somewhat abrupt demise of Nippy Sweetie in the Shetland Times, my local paper. Check out the archive here...and note - the column was not dropped, and my stopping has nothing to do with the imminent arrival of a new editor. It's more like a combination of sheer laziness and a desire to rationalise my activities. A daily radio show, two weekly national cartoon scripts, frenzied restoration of a house and family life is enough for the moment, I think.
And the blogging. Because surely the blog is the future of the column. I note that the excellent Kirk Elder is now a resident of the blogosphere. And the sackings at The Scotsman of former colleagues, among them the excellent Simon Pia (looks very like a cynical/pragmatic culling of the highest paid to me) probably indicate that the future of the "personal" or "human interest" column may be hereaboots in blogland. If only we could get some decent money for our rantings...
However, we don't have to deal with sub-editors. A good thing. Mostly. But then you end up revising and polishing, not to mention removing actionable items, day after day after day...for example, the notion that Gillian Glover was among those leaving. It seems she's not.

Recent snaps...

Variously: Dawn over Glasgow; the Assater Pillie; bizarre camping within the ruined St Ninian's Isle kirk; Stroh and Skynbow fiddles at the Violin Shop, Glasgow (we came away with a double bass and a cello); telly on the beach; the north boat, or one of them; Ullapool; sign of the Pillie-obsessed times; a tree.

...meanwhile, back in Glasgow

...I took this just after daybreak during my last visit to Glasgow, a week ago. I'd just come out of my hotel (the Devoncove - cheap, cheerful and not very clean) on Sauchiehall Street, in my favourite part of the west end - where Kelvingrove Park interfaces with Finniston, along from Mother India. The camera phone I was using (a Sony Ericsson V600i, free with my last contract) just about captures, amazingly, the shocking bluey pinkness of the dawn.
Immediately afterwards, I took my hire car back to Arnold Clark, where a man called George informed me I would be charged an extra sixty quid because one front tyre was soft. Turned out there was a nail in it. Nothing would change his mind. Insurance doesn't cover punctures, it seems. Won't be using them again. A pity, as I've been using Arnold Clark in Vinicombe Street for nigh on...well. A long time. 

Walk into winter

Worst summer in 40 years, best October in 20. Or so a local fisherman told me yesterday in the newly refurbished Brae Garage, which is now a shop, off licence and general impersonation of the Tardis, complete with computerised flight deck.
Brae is the nearest sizeable village to our humble hamlet, some 10 miles away towards the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal (the biggest in Europe). And in Brae you can get petrol, LPG ( I have an old gas-fired Volvo and Susan's getting her Jeep Cherokee converted even as we speak) fresh-baked frozen French bread and the papers. Or as they say hereaboots, da peppers. In Brae you can also get a decent meal, a pint, have a swim, a sauna or go to the gym, and there's a six-year secondary school too. Not to mention a brand-new health centre the size of Wick, and a residential care centre for elderly folk, including my mother-in-law. Oil money makes Shetland the last remnant in the UK of the late lamented welfare state. And we're grateful, don't think we're not.
Anyway, glorious October is over, and while November has come in similar shining splendour, I could see a big nasty front approaching from the south east as darkness arrived this afternoon. The clocks have gone back, soon it'll be dark at 3.00pm or earlier, and it's the season of peat fires, home brew, music making and enjoying the weather that's battering the outside of the house.
Must to bed. That's a year of blogging. My 50th birthday is all too close and my knees are creaking. Must be all this typing.