Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
Why would anybody be a columnist?
Just before I started typing this piece, I received a telephone call from Conrad Boyce, my editor.
"Mr. Varley," he opened, drawling out the last name as he is wont to do. "Where's your column?"
This was just two hours before absolute deadline for putting the Cosmos to bed (that's journalese for having the paper ready to go to the printers). And I had had two weeks to write it.
I told him I was working on it, but, truth to tell, I was sitting staring at a blank screen wondering what on Earth I was going to write about. So, as many of you may have already discerned, this column is about how I have nothing to write about except having nothing to write about. It's a ploy columnists use out of desperation now and again, although it has not happened to me too many times in the past.
Which explains the heading on this particular column. One would think that with all that's going on in the world today, indeed, all that's going on around us close to home, it would not be difficult to come up with a subject worthy of comment. But I don't think too many of my fellow columnists would disagree that it's not always that easy. It's one thing to think of a subject: it's another entirely to write a complete column about it. But columnists are supposed to come up with prose that will keep the reader riveted on a regular basis. (I have a feeling some readers might already have worked their way loose from their rivets.)
Let me give you some examples of subjects I considered writing about this week, but discarded.
Cell phones and texting: I thought there might be a column on that subject after I attended the Uxbridge Bruins exhibition game in Stouffville last week and was amazed - yet again - by the fact that some teenagers sitting in front of me spent almost the entire game texting. I wondered why they were in the hockey rink in the first place if they had no intention of watching the game.
Then, at a family gathering this weekend, a couple of family members pulled out their cell phones - or I-Phones or whatever you call them - just as we gathered around a patio fire for a sociable time. They were quickly told to put them away. But we all have our thoughts about the intrusion of cell phones and texting on social events, so the subject petered out.
Families: I had considered a column about two family gatherings I attended. One was the aforementioned get-together of my own family and the other, a week earlier, was a gathering of a family (not mine) for the funeral of a 17-year-old boy killed in a traffic accident. Two families brought together by entirely different circumstances and yet the love and hugs abounded at each. But there was nothing controversial or particularly enlightening about either event, so that subject withered.
Bylaws: After reading Susan Fedorka's letter in the Cosmos last week, I considered writing a column about some of Uxbridge's bylaws and how intrusive and basically inequitable they are - e.g. the sign bylaw - but I have pretty much ragged that subject to death over the past few years, so that was out (except to wonder why it took two bylaw officers to go and take down an offending sign).
I thought of writing about the mass of unruly hair now billowing from my scalp, all curls and waves, and trying to explain that my rather unkempt locks are the result of not having cut my hair for six months because I'm growing it long for my performance in Mark Twain's The Diaries of Adam and Eve in November. But I decided that would be shameless self-promotion and I've already done that.
I was talking to a server at Frankie's the other day and we agreed that most people have no idea just how hard restaurant staff work. Many consider it a Joe job that anyone could do, but few of those have ever walked a shift in a waiter's shoes. The same holds true for writing a column. It may seem easy to the onlooker, but trying to stay fresh and current and readable and pertinent on a regular basis can be exhausting. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that all of us, no matter what job we do, are under-appreciated by the masses who don't know just what's involved.
Tell me. am I wrong?
Pathetic, Mr. Varley - pathetic. - Ed.
