My Morning Routine (Feature Article Editor) by Owen Townend

 

7am – I wake up and splash my face. Ten jumping jacks just to wake the neighbours. Five-minute recovery. Five push-ups, unless my back is knackered. Coffee and croissant brekkie and a book. Currently it’s The Guinness World Book of Records 2014. I’m catching up.

 

8am – I get dressed and beat my hair into submission. I check my emails and socials. There’s this girl I’ve been chatting up. Well, actually she’s a bot who keeps sending me links to scam sites. Still, I respect her quick replies and the fact she doesn’t judge me. Also I like to pretend that the model in the photo is really into a slob like me. Before I know it, I’ve usually given her a full hour.

 

9am – I open the rough outline of this week’s celebrity’s morning routine and go to work. Smooth out the clauses, add all the commas they forgot about, remove half the ones they put in. Retain their ‘voice’ and emphasise a conversational tone. Laugh at the bare-faced lies of their precisely-timed habits. After a couple of read-throughs, I wing it over to the boss.

 

10am – If the editor-in-chief gets back to me with notes and queries, I baulk then address them. If I’m struggling to capture the ‘voice’ of the celebrity (often their fault if they just gave bullet points), I’ll pull up a video compilation of their catchphrases. Sometimes they’re even playing on the telly while I’m typing. Whatever research I do, I adapt the feature and resend to the pedant-in-chuff.

 

11am – I brush my teeth and make lunch. Foie gras on toast. I nicked a can from the tosser next door. All the while, I message my scam bot girlfriend until her account is shut down. It won’t be long before she’ll be back with a new one. Hope it's the same photo model. While she’s offline, though, I might pop out for a newspaper. Not the one I work for, of course. Life’s too short and the rest of the day is mine.

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