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.<\/p>\n

Delighted with ourselves we brought it to a printer on disc.<\/p>\n

“Na, no good, can’t open it”<\/p>\n

“What do you mean, is your computer broke?”<\/p>\n

“No the computer’s fine, we just don’t have that software”<\/p>\n

“What?”<\/p>\n

“We use Quark Xpress”<\/p>\n

“Qworkypress?”<\/p>\n

“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”<\/p>\n

“A piddyef, what’s that?”<\/p>\n

“I have a job on the go at the moment, I better go, did you try the printers up the road?”<\/p>\n

There we were with with weeks of work on a useless round plastic disc that no one except us could open.<\/p>\n

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’<\/p>\n