Working 9 to 5

This week I began work at Cambridge University Press as a production editor. I should mention right now that this post won't be very interesting, so feel free to go and eat biscuits or watch paint dry or take a bath. I won't be offended.

The thing is, people keep asking me what my job is. Until sometime during Tuesday, I didn't know but now I've figured it out! So this is what my job is:

The books I work on are academic and professional books - more specifically, science, technical and medical academic and professional books. Luckily I don't have to read them, because they all have names like 'Sleep Disorders' and 'Divided Brains' and 'Conservation' (those are the simple ones - I can't remember the long ones but there are some doozies) and they're full to bursting with graphs and figures and mathematical illustrations and references and they're written by people with unpronounceable names. Because the humanities and social sciences team sometimes get overloaded, I also have one title called The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism and to my great chagrin, this one seems to be more trouble than all the others. I want Humanities to treat me well, as it is my heartland. However, I don't intend to read a word of that book either so maybe it's only fair that it's giving me grief.

This is what happens.

The editorial team upstairs work with authors who have written wonderful, brainy books. They get the books in ship-shape order and ready to be published. Then, they send us the manuscript and illustrations and graphs and things and tell us to get cracking and get the book published.

On a Monday, my manager divides up the new books between the crowd of (seven) production editors. As the new person who can't write a two paragraph email without asking questions, I will be given the easy books that are short and have minimal illustrations.

Then, I go through my manuscript and make sure I have absolutely everything I need. (NB the manuscript will be a word document, not an actual manuscript because that's just how we roll in the digital age.) I find myself a friendly freelance copy editor and book them in for the job. I also send the manuscript to a typesetter, who makes the file all nice and also tells us how many pages the finished book will be.

When the typesetter sends the book back, I send it to my friendly copy-editor to go through with a fine tooth comb. Then, the book is sent BACK to the typesetter to turn into proper files that you could use to make a book. It is then proof-read by a proof-reader and the author, who I have booked in advance (and apparently this can go along the lines of: "Author, your files will be coming to you on (Insert Date)." "I shall be in Abu Dhabi until (Insert Ridiculous Date)." ". . . Um could you cast your eye over the book though? On account of when it's published it will earn you some money." (Back and forth which results in me delaying the schedule and author not being as late as they would like to be so either everyone loses or everyone wins.)) Then the book comes back all ready to be fixed by the typesetter again, and everyone in the office takes a good long look at it, then more changes are made and then (God willing) it's ready to go to press.

In the meantime, the cover could be absolutely anywhere, but it's my job to make sure it's not absolutely anywhere, it's in my covers tray and everybody in the world has seen it and added their 2 cents worth and it's been fixed.

And then it's sent to the printer.

Essentially my job is to manage the schedule, manage the budget, let everyone know what's going on, liaise with the author and the editors and the typesetters and the cover designers and the proofreader and sometimes contributors and the editorial team upstairs. And if I do it right, the book comes in on time, on budget and everyone likes it, even if they thought that they hated it when they first saw it.

The good thing is, the people are absolutely lovely. This includes the authors who, despite being not always able to get things done on time because they are simply busy and marvellous professors and doctors who have lives and jobs and babies, are very kind to me as well. The colleagues are wonderful. I ask them 100 questions per minute of the day, and they come over and sit behind me and point to the obvious thing I should do, or have done wrong, and pretend that I am of average intelligence. They also say nice things about Australia and tell me where I should go on my holidays and don't mind when I have a simply foul and disgusting cold and I bring my germs into the office because it is my first week of work and rather than stay home and rest I have to come into the office and cough disgusting germs and blow my nose and most likely get the 8 months pregnant lady horrifically ill and induce early labour or something. And they invited my to go coppicing with them! How delightfully English (in the 'this is what we think England should be like' sense, rather than the 'this is what England is actually like' sense). We get 7 hours a year to do charity work on work time and get paid for it and my team is going coppicing as a team building exercise.

FYI: Coppicing is a pruning technique where a tree or shrub is cut to ground level, resulting in regeneration of new stems from the base. It sounds like hilariously hard work that you presumably do in boots and a waterproof in the middle of November.

There is also, somewhere among the many buildings and 800-900 people onsite at Cambridge University Press, a knitting club. Interesting.

If you have stuck with me until now, felicitations. You are wonderful. Your sacrifice of love is rewarded with my e-gratitude, and here are three kisses just for you:

xxx

In Pursuit of Trivia

Well, here I am! I arrived in England last Wednesday (the third) and in Cambridge on Saturday. During that time, I walked around a lot of London, then walked around a lot of Cambridge. I have finished a blissful two and a half weeks of unemployment and, as of Monday, will be a Production Editor at Cambridge University Press. While this thought fills me with terror (I have no idea whether I'm actually capable of this job), I'm also relieved that I'll finally have a way to fill up my day. Being a tourist filled a lot of the blanks, but there is only so much touristing you can do on your own.

I don't have any photos to post - apart from a few shots taken on my phone, I haven't been doing much photography so far. Mostly because when I first arrived and took a self shot with Big Ben, I look like I'd aged about 15 years in the 2 days since I'd left Australia. I'll get around to it - these buildings have been here for a while.

Instead of a day by day account of my movements, I thought I'd impart some exciting trivia that I have learnt during my short time in Cambridge.

• English post boxes are often set into walls, and these types of post boxes are a red metal plate sort of thing with a mail slot in them. And you can tell how old they are! They have the initials of the monarch on them - and while this tends to be ER II, once someone pointed the initials out to me, I've also seen ER VII (Edward VII), G V (George V) and even V I. Excitement abounded. Perhaps I'm alone on the exact amount of exciting this is.
• The 2 pound coin has writing around the edge (the actual outside edge) that says 'Standing on the shoulders of giants'. What does this mean? I imagine it's a quote. (I then googled it to actually find out - it is supposed to be a general paraphrase of something Isaac Newton said but as it's not something he actually said in so many words, it is cheating and I don't admire it so much). Equally unintelligible is the writing on the 1 pound coin, but its lack of intelligibility is more to do with being in Latin than being a poorly attributed quote.
• Primark really is as exciting as everyone told me it will be.
• 'Petty Cury' (a street name in Cambridge) means 'little cooks' in old English, because in the old marketplace you would get cooked food in that street. Peas Hill, just nearby, comes from the old English word for fish. Actually a few places in Cambridge refer to themselves as hills. I am yet to see a hill.
• Cambridge is an 'arid' climate. Compared to the rest of England, mind you. In the botanic gardens, they have a 'dry' garden - I felt like doing a proper Australian thing and saying 'You call THIS dry' but that would lead only to stereotyping.
• My accent can be mistaken for American.
• The House of Lancaster only adopted the red rose after the war was over. It wasn't called the War of the Roses at the time on account of only one side had a rose at that point.
• There are circa 38 000 bikes in Cambridge. I will hopefully be the circa 38 001st on account of it is definitely the easiest way to get around. I just have to counteract my general fear.
• The world is an awfully small place. On Wednesday night, I met a lovely girl from Adelaide with whom I have around a dozen friends in common. It was very nice to hear a matching accent.
• The flat white is categorically the best coffee to order at Costa. Bless their hearts, the flat white is the newest thing on the English coffee scene.
• While many wealthy and influential women have been involved in founding colleges in Cambridge - as far back as Queens College, which was founded in the 1400s by the Queen at the time - the first woman to receive a degree from Cambridge was in 1948. And it was the Queen Mother. And she didn't even go there - it was an honorary degree.
• Every college chapel (query on the 'every' - but I like the idea that it's true) has an organ, and an organ player to go with it, from among the students. I would love so much to learn to play the organ. However if 10 minutes on google can be trusted, we mere mortals who are not Cambridge students don't really have the means to learn the organ. But seriously, if anyone knows a way I can learn the organ, let me in on the secret because I will seriously do it. The problem is not so much the means, as the organ. There just aren't that many lying around.

I wish that I had more of interest to share, but as I've already stretched the definition of 'interesting' rather far with the above trivia, it's probably best to leave it there.

Not much else to add, except that Cambridge is a very beautiful place. God is taking good care of me. I miss the people back home, so please stay in touch.

Much love to all!