Peter Mosley
Doris and the trolley
Sunday 27 December 2009
Pleasant to note Peter Mosley's honourable mention of the 85 Fleet Street tea trolley (Haunts - London: 85). I am sure he would endorse this tribute to the incomparable Doris who steered that vehicle through the second and fourth floor editorials during much of the 1960s. I spent only five in total of my 34 Reuter years in London (and two of those tucked away in a management post outside 85) but the always cheerful arrival of Doris was a daily highlight of my editorial stints on the fourth floor between foreign postings. She was diminutive for a Jamaican (or perhaps she hailed from Barbados, I cannot remember for sure), pretty, but above all vivacious and humorous. In terms of gastronomy, I usually held the contents of her trolley in low esteem. But, like some colleagues who also failed to relish the food and tea she served, I always dutifully lined up just to savour her wit. Though she was probably younger than many of us, her jokes were often flavoured with motherly concern. If someone looked unwell, or merely showed the effects of a long break in the Cogers, she noticed and did her best to make the sufferer smile. A great lady...
Vergil Berger
Vergil Berger
Patrick Massey
Saturday 21 March 2009
I valued Pat hugely as a friend and colleague – he was the best intro-writer I ever encountered at Reuters, and I learned a lot from him during the old London Bureau days in the late ‘sixties, not long after he came over from the AP.
I had managed to snaffle Pat from World Desk. We then took to holding London Bureau auditions in the Hoop and Grapes, with landlord Ted looking on benignly. Sung fervently enough, "The Mountains of Mourne" could secure a person a coveted place in the bureau (assuming a modicum of talent as well). Pat was a magnet for talent, and we soon had what some people rated the classiest bureau in all of Reuters. Not only Pat but also Rick Norsworthy, Art Spiegelman and a bevy of other top reporters and deskmen. Heady days. The competition with AP was head-on, and we usually won.
As happens at Reuters, our paths split, we all went our different ways and sadly I never worked closely with Pat after that. But it was always a joy to catch up with him when we coincided in London – maybe at the City Golf Club by the crypt of St Bride's (no golf interest at all, it was just a trick to get a booze licence) or the Punch.
Some small details stick in the mind: I remember Pat not only had a loping gait as some have noted here but, as the night progressed, a backwards tilt. This was especially notable when he and his old drinking chum, a UPI Japanese reporter called Aki, were out together at one of those late-late haunts like the Working Men's Newspaper Club and Institute, a printer's dive fondly known as the Chew and Spew. With Aki, the more he drank the more he leaned forward from the waist. In the wee small hours you might find Pat and Aki standing at the bar – Aki by this time bent almost double and Pat rocking back on his heels at an angle of 45 degrees, too far apart to converse.
Pat will be missed by a great many people – the tributes here show the fond respect in which he was so widely held. He was a star in an era when quality really mattered.
Peter Mosley
I had managed to snaffle Pat from World Desk. We then took to holding London Bureau auditions in the Hoop and Grapes, with landlord Ted looking on benignly. Sung fervently enough, "The Mountains of Mourne" could secure a person a coveted place in the bureau (assuming a modicum of talent as well). Pat was a magnet for talent, and we soon had what some people rated the classiest bureau in all of Reuters. Not only Pat but also Rick Norsworthy, Art Spiegelman and a bevy of other top reporters and deskmen. Heady days. The competition with AP was head-on, and we usually won.
As happens at Reuters, our paths split, we all went our different ways and sadly I never worked closely with Pat after that. But it was always a joy to catch up with him when we coincided in London – maybe at the City Golf Club by the crypt of St Bride's (no golf interest at all, it was just a trick to get a booze licence) or the Punch.
Some small details stick in the mind: I remember Pat not only had a loping gait as some have noted here but, as the night progressed, a backwards tilt. This was especially notable when he and his old drinking chum, a UPI Japanese reporter called Aki, were out together at one of those late-late haunts like the Working Men's Newspaper Club and Institute, a printer's dive fondly known as the Chew and Spew. With Aki, the more he drank the more he leaned forward from the waist. In the wee small hours you might find Pat and Aki standing at the bar – Aki by this time bent almost double and Pat rocking back on his heels at an angle of 45 degrees, too far apart to converse.
Pat will be missed by a great many people – the tributes here show the fond respect in which he was so widely held. He was a star in an era when quality really mattered.
Peter Mosley
David Mitchell
Thursday 04 September 2008
I got to know David when, along with John Tudor, I introduced the SII System/55 to the Hong Kong newsroom in 1983. David and crew had already pioneered the system in New York . The following year I returned to London and headed up the project to introduce S/55 to the London newsrooms – from that time on I worked closely with David and with Tom Guinan and Fred Gray. David was a one-off, full of quirks, but great company and we all admired him. He had a strong line in doom. “Roll on death,” he’d say from time to time, “something to look forward to.” He had other cheery sayings but I can’t remember them (does anyone else, perhaps?).
London Editorial had been badly stung in the past by having technical systems wished upon us by technical staff who did not fully understand our needs (or did not extract our requirements from us!). How we functioned at all with some of the clunky systems is remarkable in itself – quite often, warnings would go out worldwide: stop filing at once, the system can’t cope. David Mitchell was unusual in that he had acquired good understanding of the operational needs of the journalist user, as well as the technical skills to meet them. He was also brave in that he went for a system (SII) that was brand new to Reuters technical depts, using Tandem ‘Non-Stop’ architecture – and the S/55 projects came under fire because they were not using the “Digital” (DEC) architecture they’d all got used to/trained for (“’Non-stop’? I can make it stop, watch me!”).
We tested the London S/55 system to destruction at SII Sacramento – it had significant advances on the NY system – before we’d let them ship a single server or terminal. And it paid off, with the most reliable and relatively user-friendly system Editorial had ever known. Years later we were forced to abandon it after the bean-counters found a cheaper system called Typlan – problem was that they couldn’t get it to handle high-volume message-switching. When Typlan blew up, Editorial went back to SII, but I’d left by then.
David sent a warm message on my retirement – I’d finally managed to return to the newsroom, as Features Editor – and it meant more to me than most. I was very sad to hear of his passing.
Peter Mosley
London Editorial had been badly stung in the past by having technical systems wished upon us by technical staff who did not fully understand our needs (or did not extract our requirements from us!). How we functioned at all with some of the clunky systems is remarkable in itself – quite often, warnings would go out worldwide: stop filing at once, the system can’t cope. David Mitchell was unusual in that he had acquired good understanding of the operational needs of the journalist user, as well as the technical skills to meet them. He was also brave in that he went for a system (SII) that was brand new to Reuters technical depts, using Tandem ‘Non-Stop’ architecture – and the S/55 projects came under fire because they were not using the “Digital” (DEC) architecture they’d all got used to/trained for (“’Non-stop’? I can make it stop, watch me!”).
We tested the London S/55 system to destruction at SII Sacramento – it had significant advances on the NY system – before we’d let them ship a single server or terminal. And it paid off, with the most reliable and relatively user-friendly system Editorial had ever known. Years later we were forced to abandon it after the bean-counters found a cheaper system called Typlan – problem was that they couldn’t get it to handle high-volume message-switching. When Typlan blew up, Editorial went back to SII, but I’d left by then.
David sent a warm message on my retirement – I’d finally managed to return to the newsroom, as Features Editor – and it meant more to me than most. I was very sad to hear of his passing.
Peter Mosley
