These are interesting times for the industry fewer and fewer people are buying newspapers, so it is said, apart from stalwart souls like yourselves who know the value of the printed word and like something that lines the cat litter tray much more effectively than anything you can download from a website.
With the possible exception of real cat litter, of course, which in my experience as a cat sap of the first water, costs a helluva lot more than your daily Courier.
Be that as it may, there’s still a place for good, old-fashioned newsprint in the hearts of good, old-fashioned Luddites but then I would say that, wouldn’t I, although I understand that quite a few of you intrepid sorts do read these ramblings online.
Which only goes to show that quite a few of you should get out more, if that doesn’t sound too terribly ungrateful.
Believe me, I’m not and I am here to tell you that your reading habits as regards the daily news are not isolated in their own little world of Garfield, the crossword and tetchy tongue-tickings about the standard of grammar and spelling and the state of the region’s potholes.
Oh, no sirree.
The heat is (not quite) on
No man is an island and all that and nowhere is this more true than in the wonderful world of the still (just) extant hack reporter.
There is more to it than just having instant access to tales of a dog falling over in Freuchie or alleged sightings of rats in the kitchens of well-known hostelries.
I understood this with sudden crystal clarity and more than a slight a thrill of horror only the other day while watching my step-son, a highly capable young man and a very successful architect to boot, building a barbecue.
With that kind of technical expertise behind him he is no stranger to the glass-on-glass flange and the concept of enough RSJs (reinforced steel joists to you and happily ignorant me) to hold up the Tay Bridge you would think it would be a doddle.
Not so. I learned a few new and heartfelt oaths and surmised that it is not only in the construction of self-assembly furniture that there are bits left over to stand on in bare feet, like a form of adult Lego.
So what has this to do with what you might or might not peruse over your Special K of a morning?
I’ll tell you. What was missing from the process was newspaper.
“Place the chimney starter with coals on top of the lighter cubes or crumpled newspaper and light. It’s that easy,” stated the instruction manual with an airy assumption that such items would come readily to hand.
Of course, my step-son and his fiance, being young people, had no newspapers in the house, crumpled or otherwise. The project stalled with a dull thud.
OK, they could have used lighter cubes but they didn’t have any of those either.
And we can’t all rely on endless supplies of lighter cubes, whatever they are, being available on tap, so to speak, or even in Tesco.
The point is, dear reader(s), that quite unwittingly, those who no longer buy newspapers are also contributing to the potential demise of the barbecue industry.
It just won’t work without us.
Some people, having suffered all too regularly the horrors of the inedible burger and the cremated sausage, may say this is no bad thing. But it seems to me that it’s the thin end of the (potato) wedge.
The real thing
Where will it all end?
With book burning, most likely, with desperate barbecue-ers standing around like little Savonarolas, casting the knowledge of ages into the flames and rubbing their chilblained hands with glee at the result, not to mention the prospect of a perfectly charred saveloy courtesy of the extensive paginations of EL James or JRR Tolkien.
As in many areas of life, size matters here. And you could argue that there are many authors for whose works burning is too good.
You do need the real thing, of course, which I admit may not get you much further forward in the average modern household.
The very name Kindle might lull you into a false sense of security but it may not work terribly well if you put a match to it and try to fry a bacon rasher on it.
We in the newspaper industry, by contrast, know our place, as keepers of the flame of the short attention span and matters of ephemeral importance.
Lighting the blue touchpaper has its appeal if it keeps us and our ilk in what passes for gainful employment these days.
There are parallels elsewhere, too, including in the Iberian cork forests which are being badly affected by the advent of the plastic wine stopper.
As a result, the Iberian lynx is in danger.
So I can (and do) argue that my consumption of rioja is purely for the protection of a form of endangered species other than the beleaguered print journalist.
And remember, before you add fuel to the fire, that you read it here first