Every now and then the arguments for job cuts go dry in your mouth

MATTHEW PAR RIS

There was one reason to hesitate before writing this: what if the News International copytakers thought I only went to their leaving do to get a column out of it?

I didn't. I formed no such intention when, on seeing their invitation on the Times's internal email, I thought it would be nice to say thank-you to a group who have put up with me for 13 years and upon whose skill and friendly tolerance I have depended.

Our copytakers are for the chop. It was inevitable. The Daily Telegraph's went some time ago, to an agency in Wetherby which will now be taking News International's copy too. I have no Luddite axe to grind and suppose the move was inevitable and the terms of our in-house staff's redundancy fair. Everyone saw it coming for years. Besides, for people with such superb experience there could hardly be a better time to be looking for another job. These are confident women (almost all women, these days, though it used to be a man's job). Better the certainty, whatever the jolt, than a lingering fate.

But still it was sad. Through all the years of Thatcherite upheaval, I had seen occupations cut down like grass in the face of changing times, but always far from my world. Odd how, when the jobs lost are part of your own life, the economic argument for change that you always rehearsed so cheerfully dries in your mouth. You just want to think of reasons to postpone it.

The copytakers' supervisor had gathered the whole team, including those who had left years ago, at a little party at the Caxton public house on the Highway in Wapping, on Friday after work. All the journalists and columnists who, over the years, had used the copytakers, were invited. There were trays of drinks and a generous spread of food waiting for us there.

A copytaker takes down over the telephone a reporter's or columnist's words when these have to be dictated from outside. Copy is transcribed from the earpiece straight on to the keyboard and into the system; it will never be typed again.

The speed at which these people type is unbelievable. A ponderous speaker need hardly slow delivery at all; a copytaker can type nearly as fast as you speak. But more, than keyboard skills are needed. Unless the copytaker is following the sense, errors will creep in. In my case the errors crept out: copytakers more often corrected mistakes than introduced them. They could spell, for a start. They would notice grammatical — even factual — blunders and politely inquire if that was really what I meant. Sometimes they would point out that a sentence made no sense at all and I would pretend that I had mis-dictated, while swiftly rephrasing. The copytakers were my first audience: when they chuckled or murmured agreement, my heart would leap. When they sounded blank or bored, my fragile columnist's morale would sink.

Arriving at the Caxton I felt uncertain. I had never seen or met a copytaker in my life. Voices were familiar to me, as mine was to them, but what did these women look like? 'You'll like them, they're a lovely crowd,' a colleague said.

They were. Unshaven and in jeans I felt scruffy, for they were all dressed up for the party: smart, well-groomed thirtyand forty-somethings. We swapped stories about the times I had tried desperately to deliver copy down a crackling line from Tanzania, from public phone-boxes in Argentina, and once from a ship in the Antarctic. Within the pale there are freefone numbers you can use, but beyond it you are either shoving coins desperately into slots while clutching a sheaf of scribbled notes, or getting the copytakers to try to ring you back when nobody quite knows what number they should use. It was hit and miss, but in the end we never did miss. Via the copytakers I never once in 13 years failed finally to get a piece through.

They told me about some of their ruder customers, and about the supervisors' occasional need to discipline a sporting correspondent (`My girls don't take copy from boys who swear'). They told me about the time an exceptionally offensive fellow, whom they recognised as a journalist with another newspaper group, cursed at his copytaker and told her to shut up and get on with it when she suggested that perhaps he had rung the wrong publication. He had. She got on with it. The following day they checked the newspaper for which he did write: his column had failed to appear; they all had a good laugh.

They told me about the time a famous contemporary poet had rung in with a poem for St Valentine's Day. It had been intended, I fear, for the Daily Telegraph, but he had become muddled. The Times published it immediately. A misunderstanding, no doubt.

Chatting thus was rather like encountering the man who has driven your train for a decade but whom you've never met. At the Caxton I joined, for an hour or more, a different little world from my own; touching• mine but never shared.

But a passing world. Like most journalists, I learnt some years ago how to send copy straight down the wire from my laptop, either via email (as this column has reached you) or using a journalists' software package, Copymaster, which achieves the same effect. You can even transmit with a mobile telephone these days, plugging it into your laptop on the train.

Once I rang the copytakers every week or more. But now the circumstances when direct dictation is the only way occur less and less often, though once in a while they do. For just a handful of journalists like onthe-spot reporters the need still regularly arises, but, walking into the pub, I tried to recall when I had most recently phoned the copytakers. It was from the island of La Reunion last March. A habit had died without my even noticing it.

Thus do we wonder — all at once when something prompts the reflection — when it was that we last entered a bank to cash a cheque; or saw a hitchhiker waiting with his placard at the bottom of the Ml; or made up a packed lunch for work. Times change imperceptibly, and all around commonplace little ceremonies are taking place, • unknown to their participants, for the last time. For everyone we know there will be a last time our eyes meet, probably without realising it. I am only sorry that for me and the excellent Times copytakers, the last was also the first.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.