I bought a copy of my old newspaper yesterday for the traditional reason that it contained a picture of our daughter. This was a miscalculation as the picture was only used online.

I’d already read the feature on my phone, but holding the newspaper in my hand stirred the inky echoes.

Let’s not dwell on the difference, as life moves on. Now it’s a this-and-that life, or what one of my colleagues in one of my jobs yesterday referred to as a “portmanteau career”.

A new element is being added to the bag soon: a different pass to hang around my neck, a new email address to check. That’ll make three jobs, plus a spot of freelancing.

It’s another journalism lecturing gig, three hours a week until Christmas. I am properly pleased but looking at the newspaper revived memories of more stable days. Except they weren’t that steady as that guillotine was long predicted. Anyway, instability does force you to show a bit of gumption, or so I try to tell myself.

The feature in the paper was about the Japanese tearoom our daughter manages and it was a good and lively read. The photographs were fab, and therein hangs a sad story. They were taken by the last remaining photographer on that newspaper, and he has now been handed the black spot of redundancy.

I passed on advice that can be summed up as: it’s shit but you get through it. And I’m sure he will.

The feature looked good, but the old designer in me wondered why the best picture wasn’t used larger than the others. “No one cares what you think,” my wife said, and she is right (incidentally, I just mistyped that as “my wise” and perhaps she is that too).

Life is better in some ways: busy and fractured and challenging, although doing this and that for a living does see you spinning plates all the time.

WE haven’t managed a holiday this year, but that’s all right – Facebook is spending all month reminding us of the one we had last year.

Every day something pops up, a memory spun out of an algorithm. Look at the fun you were having a year ago today. We were in Australia to visit our daughter who has returned to manage that tearoom. Fabulous times were had, and now that times are less fabulous, or let’s say just tired and ordinary, Facebook is there to throw up another reminder of brighter days.

I’m not sure this is much of an advantage, but perhaps it will spur us on to have a proper holiday next year. Then Facebook can remind us about that one, too.