2005-05-25 - 6:33 p.m.

Three days of the week I work in the offices of the second biggest
selling newspaper in the country, not that I'm too proud about that,
but you take what you can get. I'm in the online offices, ticked away
in the bowels, but walking around the building, you can instantly pick
out the Newspaper Men. I don't mean the thrusting young reporters, all
cufflinks and hair and brimming self-confidence. I mean the aged
hacks, who began work straight from school forty years ago, who moled
their way into the press rooms, and started to dissolve into greyness
through lack of natural daylight and machine coffee.

They stand around the atrium, blinking in turns into the sun and their
polystyrene cups, their skins sallow and seethrough, once chained to
the clunking presses, now nuked by industrial computer monitors,
burning their retinas and robbing them of their colour. They're like
pasty white slugs, leaving a slimy trail of inky copy.

Of course, they earn a squillion pounds a year. The reward for
devoting their lives to the paper. They spend it on three pints every
lunchtime, overpriced cars and vengeful ex-wives.

I'm happy to have work, of course, but it feels like yet another in a
long series of stopgaps. When I'm here I feel regimented, all achey
limbs and a shouty head and I want to stretch out and take a risk.

The next few weeks have come just on cue. Minor religions have been
founded on less. A series of jaunts, some distance and headroom. You don't get lonely when you don;t have time to think about it.

Pablo spring tour:

26th May, or, if you prefer, tomorrow: Montreal
1st June: Barcelona
11th June: Arkansas
17th June: New Orleans