Moving blues

The horrors of house moving dwindle to serenity when one is faced with the process of moving not just an office but an entire newspaper. We move into our state-of-the-art new building on Monday. Rolling towards the Friday deadline of having all gear packed and owner-coded in uniform boxes finds newsrooms wherein the sounds of phones and keyboards are overwhelmed by the rrrripp of packing tape and the thud and whack of box-packing. The new premises is large, but desk space is smaller by far than that to which we are accustomed. It's throw-out time. How did we accumulate so much? Bins are rolled away and replaced with fresh ones throughout the day as old files are turfed, boxes and boxes of papers, press releases, note books, research... Review books and CDs, sample cosmetics and DVDs are being hauled from cupboards and set out for general grabbing. There is no room for reference books in the new office. It is supposed to be paperless. So we drag our private libraries home in bags. All will be pristing and sleek in the new building. Well, that is what the designers believe. We shall see. Journalists are untidy and busy workers - and the incoming tides of material often are overwhelming. I predict it will be only a matter of days before the new takes on a look of the old.