Anxiety

Mild anxiety dream last night, content probably partially induced by yesterday's proximity to the Great George Street government offices, of which more in due course.

I was involved in the preparation of a substantial booklet, about the size & shape of the Treasury Red Book, once published on the day of the Budget. The red book still exists, although perhaps more skimmed in the web version to be seen at reference 1, rather than in a paper version. Furthermore, the paper version that I remember had a deep red cover rather than an orange cover and did not have tasteful shades of green inside. Perhaps the décor consultants have been in.

Can't remember what my dream booklet was about, but my main contribution was to write a couple of pages at the very front, a couple of pages of creative writing. Fiction.

Towards the end of the production cycle, I decided that I did not like what I had done and fiddled with my pages in the master copy being prepared for the printer, but did not bother the tell the print coordinator, someone with whom I did not get on very well.

As a result, he noticed the unauthorised change and thought, quite reasonably, to revert to what had been there before, but without bothering to consult me. He ended up reverting my two pages to some third version, which I did not like much better than the first version. And this was what got printed.

Much worry about how my name & reputation was going to be forever tainted by this naff bit of publication. Quite forgetting in my anxiety that practically no-one read such stuff and the few that did were unlikely to remember the following day, never mind the following month.

As it happened, my two pages came with those near invisible perforations running down the gutter, thus enabling their neat removal. I vaguely thought that I could tear out all the offending pages and replace them with the right ones.

Wake up, perhaps overwhelmed by the unconscious thought of all that pasting in.

PS: impressed by the speed with which the orange book loads on this PC. Have they done something cunning? Also makes a change from the DT, or even the pinkun. But I notice that they have lost their penchant for side headings, side headings causing me much IT grief at one point. In the days when Ventura Publisher was the cat's whiskers and Word had not been invented. House style for charts and tables seems much as I remember it, shades of green aside.

Reference 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/416330/47881_Budget_2015_Web_Accessible.pdf.