ONE of the hats I wear at The Advertiser, aside from layout sub-editor and biscuit-tin raider, is to help train young cadets in the fine art of feature writing. Last week, while talking to our newest group, I found myself wanting to impart to them the sort of intangible, practical advice I would have sorely appreciated as a cadet.
For instance, I'd say: LEARN Russian if you want to phone Russia. This may sound logical, but it wasn't to me.
See, as a cadet, I didn't let my lack of Russian dampen my enthusiasm for actually ringing the then-USSR to speak directly to a company involved in a new Queensland export deal. I ended up with a conversation that went like this:
ME: Hello?
RUSSIAN WOMAN: Grunt.
ME: Oh, hi. I am a journalist calling from Australia and I'd like to
speak to someone about a new deal regarding ...
RUSSIAN WOMAN: Ve only sell trak-tors.
ME: Right. See that's the point. I was ...
RUSSIAN WOMAN: I to get someone who speak English.
ME: Okay. (Pause.)
RUSSIAN MAN: Traaaarrk-toooorrrs. Trak-tors. Ve only sell
trak-tors.
ME: Yeah. Tractors. Got it.
RUSSIAN PHONE: Click.
It made scintillating reading in the masterpiece I wrote up but,
alas, the boss did not agree. The story saw about as much light of day as the business deal did in the end.
MEANWHILE, I'd advise cadets to be sceptical if they hear a name and
assume there is a place that offers both tennis and power production in one convenient building under the name Tennis & Power Station. As a colleague finally told me, amid tears of mirth (and pity), its actual name was the Tennyson Power Station.
(Well, that would explain their low club membership rates.)
ALSO, if one must make a human error concerning war dates, do not
make it on one of the big wars or the big dates, as people do tend to notice that ... as I discovered the next day when a posse of six infuriated Diggers and one angry high school history teacher (mine) demanded my sacking for ending World War I in December.
Well actually, Mrs Fudge (yes, that's her actual name) didn't want me sacked, she just wanted to shake her head and ask me, in annoyance: “Where did I go wrong with you?”
I tried to explain to them all how innocently the mistake had
happened. But to no avail. It seems no one buys the typo theory when nearly all the digits are exactly the same (11/11/18) to start with.
LASTLY, if cadets find themselves writing stories about the
“impotence” problems of Sydney's serial granny killer, do not refer to his condition over and over as impudence. Not that John Wayne Glover would have minded, I'm sure.
While I'd like to say both in my own defence, and as an explanation
for the fact I was never sacked for what seems a rather appalling start to a career - first, everyone is human, and second, I did occasionally also do a lot of stuff right, too.
Of course that wouldn't be funny.
Well, except maybe to Mrs Fudge.