Subterranean editors

THE FREELANCE Wellness campaign sounds like a good idea; and I'd like to add a grim note.

I've been watching the obituaries of sub-editors over the past couple of years in the Press Gazette. Quite a few do live to that biblical three score years and ten - and beyond - but there's a noticeable phalanx turning up dead in their fifties, and of course the Press Gazette's own sub-editor has just died at 27.

Reading these obituaries you pick up phrases like "did not suffer fools gladly" and "although apparently irascible, would turn out to be a fund of help and advice to those who dug below the surface" and (of course?) "liked his beer and displayed an astonishing knowledge of the curry houses of the West Yorkshire region".

The dear departed were not specifically freelances - but I fear freelance subs may respond in the same way to the rigours of the job.

See you in the gym,

© Humphrey Evans

• See more on the wellness campaign and get the questionnaire at www.londonfreelance.org/wellness - and send your recipes for contentment as well as dire warnings.: email editor@freelancenews.org