18 Three opportunities

Enlivening though much of it was, my period as a London drama critic was no more than an interlude in my journalistic career.. The more I devoted myself to it,  the more it seemed a sideline from which I might never escape.  My desire to return to full-time music criticism preoccupied me, though I knew it might mean quitting The Scotsman as my workplace.  Music criticism was my metier, and I increasingly wanted back to it.

Suddenly I received three simultaneous opportunities. From Edinburgh came a letter from Christopher Grier, The Scotsman’s staff music critic, saying he had done the job for sixteen years and had had enough of it. He was coming to London to try his luck on a freelance basis, with a weekly column on The Listener as his starting point. I wrote back  to him instantly, asking if this meant that the Edinburgh job - the one for which, since my schooldays, I had always yearned - was now open. He replied that it was, and since nobody yet knew about it, there were meanwhile  no contenders.

He said he would consult Alastair Dunnett, The Scotsman editor, on my behalf and, almost by return of post, Dunnett wrote asking if I would like to be Christopher’s successor in Edinburgh. Those were the great days when serious British newspapers had staff music critics - something that is now a rarity - and I was on the point of saying yes when two further offers came my way.

The first was from Holland, proposing an extension of my old job as sleeve note editor for Philips Records in Baarn. Not only was I offered an enhanced version of what I had done previously but a house to go with it. Would I like to fly over for a few days and take a look?

But in London, too, things were happening. The leading music agent Wilfred Stiff, a nice man for whom I had interviewed musicians and written profiles of them, asked me if I would like to join him on a full-time basis.  Some careful weighing up clearly needed to be done. My visit to Holland proved inviting, but the job, I thought, could probably have been handled from London. Was a house in Holland - perhaps for life - be enough of a temptation or would it be an anchor round my neck? I had worked in Baarn before and liked it, though with reservations. I wavered, and said no.

I also said no to Wilfred Stiff, because I did not really want to work for an agent, despite the attraction of his offer. It was The Scotsman, and my native Edinburgh, for which I opted, and for which I worked for a further 25 years.

It was the right decision. Musically they were the best years of my life, and though they ended in disgruntlement and two editors who gave me great displeasure, they were great while they lasted - the acme of what a newspaper music critic’s life should be like, with opportunities for travel of a sort I had never anticipated and offshoots, such as writing about food and wine, which suited my lifestyle.

So I said yes to Alastair Dunnett and, so long as he and his eventual successor Eric Mackay were in charge, I never regretted my decision.

8 November 2014