That deep sigh of relief that you may be able to hear is me celebrating the fact that the latest edition of our synagogue magazine, has been edited, set, proofread and printed. As I write these words, it is being distributed in time for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, next weekend. I was ‘volunteered’ to edit this edition, and, while it was a stimulating and ultimately very satisfying experience, I can’t say I’m sorry that it’s over.

The bar had been set very high by the previous editor, and I was concerned about letting the side down (PC-speak for I was damned if I was going to have anyone say that I didn’t do a better job). We had some anxious moments, as, I’m sure, is always the case when people who want to ‘just buff up that aphorism a little, and maybe add another curlicue in the corner there’ bump up against a non-negotiable deadline like The Day of Judgement.

However, in the end, everything fell into place, and I’m actually very pleased with the result. Of course, when your synagogue membership includes several talented writers with something interesting to say, as well as a professional graphic designer, the editor’s job is made much simpler.

I find myself thinking back to my other three roles as editor, all over 50 years ago. In my youth, I thought about becoming a journalist. My mother arranged for me to meet a friend of hers who worked for (if I remember rightly) one of the London evening newspapers. I remember he said: ‘Well, the best thing you can do if you really want to be a journalist is sit down every day, start writing, and don’t stand up until you have written 2000 words. It doesn’t matter what you write about, but 2000 words, at one sitting, every day.’ Those of you who knew me aged 14 or 15 will realise that that was the day my journalistic ambitions died. It sounded way too much like hard work and iron discipline.

The irony, of course, is that, for the last 44 weeks (well, someone has to keep count, and I bet you haven’t been) I have sat down at the keyboard every Sunday morning and produced 1500 words, give or take. Perhaps it’s not too late for me to start a new career. I could buy a notepad, and learn Pitman’s during the second lockdown we are threatened with starting on Friday. I already have a fawn trenchcoat and a trilby.

My career as co-editor, co-writer, co-everything began when I was ten years old, when Peter, my very bestest friend in the world, and I decided to write a magazine to give out to our classmates. I can no longer remember the details of production, although I am guessing we might have drafted in my mother to type the copy up on Gestetner skins (if you’re under 50, you can google it), then beg to use the school’s duplicator to ‘run them off’. What I do remember is that the content of our magazine was (not even very loosely) modelled on the comics our parents allowed us to read.

So, not the Dandy or Beano, whose pages were populated by very naughty boys with catapults and grubby knees who either went around in gangs – The Bash Street Kids – or operated as loners – Denis the Menace.

Oh no; we were raised on the saintly trinity of The Swift, The Robin and The Eagle, in which chisel-featured Dan Dare, the Pilot of the Future, flew to Venus, and football captains rallied their team to an against-all-odds 11^th-hour victory, while, at the turn of a page, plucky Cockney privates helped pipe-smoking RAF officers devise plans for escaping from a Nazi stalag. I particularly remember that we fashioned just such a hero, with his trusty companion. (We never discussed it, but I’m sure Peter and I each saw ourselves as the tall, handsome leader, and each saw the other as the slightly overweight sidekick.)

The details of the storyline are lost in the mists of antiquity, but I know that the intrepid duo were behind enemy lines, on a saboteur mission that would, if successful, change the course of the war overnight. Each week, we wrote our heroes into a tight corner from which there appeared to be no escape, and we went to press with no idea how we would extricate them; each following week, we managed to find a way. It was a real adrenaline rush, I can tell you.

If I make it sound as though this magazine ran for years, I apologise. I have a horrible feeling it folded after two issues. I do know that I would love to see a copy again, and, if Peter is reading this, I hope he has proved to be a better hoarder than I am.

My next venture into the world of Hearst, Beaverbrook and Murdoch was as the editor of the Hanoar Hatzioni newsletter, Batnua (Hebrew for ‘In the Movement’). Since we tried to produce this every month (with a national circulation that included groups as widespread as Liverpool, Swansea, Bournemouth, Middlesbrough), editorship involved a considerable amount of article-writing as well. I very much enjoyed both roles, except for the moment at which my hubris led to my downfall. Eager to flaunt what I thought of as my extraordinarily rich vocabulary, I wrote about ‘a plethora of opportunities’. Unfortunately, I thought ‘plethora’ meant, not an abundance, but a scarcity. I still blush at the memory, but at least I learnt early on to double-check in the dictionary before committing myself to print.

My last role as editor in my youth was of the school magazine, Chronicles. Let me assure you, this was a magazine that did what it said on the tin. (Incidentally, ‘It does what it says on the tin’ is an idiom that I assumed was fairly old, but I discovered a couple of weeks ago that it dates from 1995 only, when it was devised as an advertising slogan for Ronseal waterproof sealant.) Chronicles. Could there be a more leaden, self-important, stodgy title than that? (Incidentally, I just checked, and, 53 years on, my old school magazine is still published under the same magical name – if it’s always been broke, why fix it?) Faced with that title on the front cover, who would want even to glance inside? With its reports of school sporting achievements, comings and goings of staff, acquisition of equipment or new buildings, it said precious little that was not already known  by its readers, and even less that most of its readers would want to know.

However, the position of editor was quite a prestigious one, and would certainly look good on my final school report, and so I gladly accepted the position, which meant working, with a co-editor, under the close supervision of the Head of English, a teacher whom I respected and liked. The technical process of editing, and particularly the proof-reading of the galleys, I thoroughly enjoyed. I was at last working with a professional printer, who produced galley proofs on paper with wide margins for corrections and emendations, and with several pages printed beneath each other on long sheets of uncut paper.

However, what makes this experience really stick in my memory is what happened with my co-editor, John Fleming, a tall, soft-spoken and undemonstrative youth with whom I studied English and who I was friendly enough with, if only as a classmate. He wrote for the magazine a poem that was certainly of its time (the time being 1967), reflecting the then-current dalliance with Eastern cultures. The poem, of which I am sure I did not understand all the allusions, included a line that referred to ‘Buddha contemplating his navel’. On first reading this, our overseer, the Head of English, stepped in and stated categorically that the school magazine could not possible include as racy a word as ‘navel’, and he invited John to rewrite the line. (I swear to you that I am not making a word of this up, although I appreciate it may be hard to believe in 2020, when not an edition of the Times of London can appear, it seems, without one or other columnist writing ‘f***’ – albeit with the asterisks, but nevertheless.)

What makes this story even more worth retelling is that John, who had, up to this point, seemed to me the least swinging sixties of our entire cohort (even including myself), refused to accept the editorial decision. When he saw that the powers that be’d were unbudgeable, he withdrew the poem from the magazine, resigned his position as co-editor, walked out of school, never to return, left home and, as far as we were concerned, disappeared off the face of the earth. Over the next year or so rumours circulated that he had found a job writing for Private Eye, the scurrilously satirical magazine that was just about as cutting-edge as one could get in 1967, but we couldn’t quite manage to believe that.

Over the next 45 years, I occasionally found myself wondering where he had actually ended up, until, eventually, the internet developed to the point where even I could locate him. A single email ‘I saw your name and wondered if you could possibly be…’ sufficed to confirm that he was, in fact, a leading writer, producer, sponsor, promoter and chronicler and analyst of alternative comedy. His website gives a brief bio, which I only point you to so that you can appreciate that, while Renaissance European giant Antonio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (you may remember him from my post of Feb 4 this year) makes me feel like an under-achiever, at least he wasn’t in my class at school, and getting no higher marks than me for English. However, I certainly don’t begrudge John his achievement; it couldn’t have happened to a nicer, or more unexpected, guy.

Which leaves me, editing a synagogue magazine, and imagining myself as Clark Gable getting to share a room with Claudette Colbert, or possibly Robert Redford (listen, if I’m going to fantasize, then I’m hardly going to choose to be Dustin Hoffman, am I!) meeting Deep Throat in a dimly-lit underground car park.

Meanwhile (and you know what that means) here’s ‘Hold the Front Page’ Tao, rushing his copy to the editor. Dirty business, journalism, evidently.