February 2014 Issue of 4×4 Magazine

Well, here we are in 2014. If it’s not too late, hopefully you will allow me to wish all readers and supporting advertisers a very happy New Year. Sitting in my office a few weeks before Christmas, such a comment seems ridiculously premature, but for that we can thank extraordinary printer publishing schedules. When I started as a journalist, we had manual typewriters. I thought myself jack-the-lad when I purchased a smart, slimline Olivetti portable version that allowed me to write my sports copy at an event. Typed pages, complete with Tipp-Ex corrections, were then sent to the printers. Rolls of film were developed (black and white, of course) so that galley proofs and pictures could be – manually – cut and pasted onto large design boards. Pasted with Cow Gum, which today would probably be classified as a Class B drug, such was its pungent aroma. Magazine production took forever.

Today, of course, it is all-instant; photos taken on smartphones are sent wirelessly to websites, to be live to the world in something called a nanosecond. Not so magazine printing, it seems. I am writing this long before Christmas, yet when you pick the magazine from the newsagent’s shelf, it will be some days after Twelfth Night, turkey dinners and unwanted socks will be long forgotten. Christmas will be over, and if we believe what is being clarion called from the Daily Stupid tabloids, we’ll probably be under several feet of snow.