After I got back from my stint in Oz my Father got onto me to work with him in producing a magazine about Tipperary. He had produced a few tourist guide books to Ireland, years previously, and had also published a couple of issues of Magical Tipperary. So a quick crash course in advertising sales and off I went calling door to door to half the businesses in Tipperary selling ads. Then somebody, for better or for worse I’m not sure, gave my father a desk top publishing program to do up the magazine. I had marginally more computer experience than him (could send an email, open Word and Excel and could type with 2 fingers as opposed to his 1) so I got the job of ‘GraphicDesigner’. The sheer joy of learning how to put a block of text into a square box was only surpassed by learning how to take it out again! Through trial and error, several undo’s and regular consultation with the ‘Help’ function I finally got all 96 pages assembled into something that slightly resembled a magazine.
Delighted with ourselves we brought it to a printer on disc.
“Na, no good, can’t open it”
“What do you mean, is your computer broke?”
“No the computer’s fine, we just don’t have that software”
“What?”
“We use Quark Xpress”
“Qworkypress?”
“All printers use it, you’ll need to get it done up in Quark Xpress to have it printed or convert it into a pdf”
“A piddyef, what’s that?”
“I have a job on the go at the moment, I better go, did you try the printers up the road?”
There we were with with weeks of work on a useless round plastic disc that no one except us could open.
Lets print it ourselves! Dad went to the UK and bought a second hand printing press and got a few hours lessons in how to work it. Got it shippped home and then we were ‘Printers’