Today is my last day at the Arran Banner and after a career in journalism spanning 47 years it is finally time to enjoy retirement, writes Hugh Boag.
So perhaps you will permit me to indulge in a personal trip down memory lane as I close this chapter of my life.
I was born in Paisley and brought up and educated in Renfrew. From an early age I had a keen interest in journalism and at the age of 18 I left home to join the Carrick Gazette in Girvan as a trainee reporter.
I was the first employee of the newspaper group, then owned by well-known Ayrshire businessman Ian Brown, to be put through college while training on the job and did so for two years with block release courses to the Napier College in Edinburgh (now Napier University) and thereafter sat my professional exams.
A spell with the Galloway Gazette at the group’s Stranraer office followed. However both papers were at that time still being produced by hot metal and I still remember the noise and smell of the caseroom in Newton Stewart.
Fully qualified I was keen to find new opportunities and the larger Guthrie group of newspapers came calling and I moved to the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald then housed beside the printing presses in Herald Street, where Asda now stands.
One of my jobs on the Herald was to compile the weekly Arran page and so made my very first trips to Arran in 1980 starting a love affair with the island which persists to this day.
It seems fitting that my career should come full circle in 40 odd years, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Promotion was to follow within the Guthrie group and a found myself chief reporter of the Irvine Times. I was married by this time to Kathleen and myself and my oldest son Stewart were living in Stewarton.
However, I had always had the notion to work abroad and the journalist magazine of the time, the UK Press Gazette, was full of tempting jobs all over the world.
One which caught my eye was a position with the Oman Daily Observer in the Sultanate of Oman. One of the main reasons I am sure I got the job was that I took the bus to London for an interview, a long and uncomfortable overnight journey in those days.
The editor in chief, who I met at his home, was an expatriate Scot by the name of Andy Reid Anderson, who had been injured in the helicopter accident during the Dhofari War in Oman and had subsequently been put in change of the government run newspaper.
We hit it off and within a matter of weeks I had quit my job, packed my bags and heading to Oman, closely followed by wife and son, who quicky adapted to the expatriate life.
The job had its challenges but also many rewards and I look back on my time there with fondness. I rose to the position of night news editor until I got itchy feet again.
My main aim in going abroad had been to get to Hong Kong and I arranged for an interview for a job when we went on holiday to the Far East. This job with a Middle East publishing company is the only time in my career I have not worked in newspapers. They produced expatriate magazines and several trade publications so the work was varied and interesting.
However, much as I enjoyed it the cost of accommodation, school fees and the arrival of our younger son Fraser saw us make the decision to head home. It was 1989 and time to get a real job.
We returned to Stewarton and I began doing subbing a reporting shifts in Glasgow for the Daily Record, The Sun and the Evening Times, and in a very short space of time a position came up for a Paisley reporter, when the Evening Times still had offices in the major towns of the West of Scotland.
Again I am pretty sure that being from Renfrew and knowing the area well had more to do with the then legendary editor George McKechnie giving me the job than my years travelling.
The Evening Times would go on to become a huge part of my life for the next 25 years and from the Paisley reporter I went on to become the crime reporter - a busy job in Glasgow - before joining the newsdesk to oversee the news operation and finally news editor, a position I held for 12 years, running the news department of the multi-edition evening newspaper.
However, latterly I had become more an office manager than a journalist and I finally left the Evening Times in 2013 with a view to getting back to the cut and thrust of journalism by freelancing in Ayrshire and looking to expand into pr work.
However, fate or providence had other ideas. Ever since my first visits to Arran all those years ago my family and I had always made regular trips to the island. Indeed my friend had a family holiday home in Whiting Bay which we used for years when my sons were growing up. Retiring to Arran was always seriously on our minds.
So by chance I saw that the Arran Banner were looking for a replacement for the late Howard Driver who had just left the paper after 34 years.
As a result I met a representative from the Banner head office in Oban, Stuart McCulloch, in Irvine and he asked me if I would come over to Arran to help out for a month. That month turned into three months when I stayed in the salubrious surroundings of the McLaren Hotel, which was not the eyesore we have to live with now.
It was during that time during the regular commutes for me and my wife that we decided to make a life choice realising we could both live and work on Arran and after renting accommodation moved into our lovely house in Brodick.
And I have to say the last 11 years have been a joy and have passed in a flash. I have met some truly inspiring people and the community spirit which is alive and well on Arran is a pleasure to be part of.
There are exciting times ahead for the Arran Banner with a new website - West Coast Today - coming soon and I hope I will be able to still play a part in newspaper development going forward.
I also plan to keep my hand in with freelance and pr work and if anyone wishes to get in touch they can do so. Tel: 07711 096396 or by email h.boag@ymail.com
I wish the Arran Banner well going forward and I thank all my colleagues, in particular Colin Smeeton, and more recently Maureen McDonald for their support as well as everyone in Oban and elsewhere in the group and wish them all the very best for the future.
It has certainly beat working for a living!
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