Ever changing marina activity

Each time I visit the marina and Yacht Club at Southampton’s Ocean Village I have to pinch myself  . . . during a lifetime spent in newspapers and magazines, editorial meetings were never in such salubrious surroundings as these.
I have been putting together the members’ magazine for the Royal Southampton Yacht Club, organising handbook publications, and keeping tabs on the website now for 11 years and still feel as elated with each edition as I have in the past during that working career in publications.
Maybe the mechanics of preparing publications have changed somewhat over the years as electronic publishing in all its forms has gained momentum, although the basics of news gathering, research and journalistic demands remain very much the same as they were in my early days learning the publishing business.
But editorial planning has taken on an entirely different perspective in the surroundings of the clubhouse. The outlook itself across the marina is magical, and there is always something to catch the eye.
And that maybe is the one contradiction. How on earth could I sustain a train of thought through a 2,500-word  article, say, when there is an outlook like this. Paradoxically, it is that self same practicality that put paid to my onetime dream of settling abroad somewhere in the sun to pursue a career of writing.  I realised very quickly on a visit to the Bordeaux region that when the sun was high, by around 11am any day, I would feel the need to draw the cork on a bottle of vino.   And that effectively would curtail my day’s discipline for writing.

Strong willed you need be.  But I have that niggling suspicion that other considerations would destroy my priorities.  At least, here in Ocean Village, the ever changing vista within the marina, is an inspiration for working with sailing publications.