APRIL 25. 10.30am.
Public holidays are extremely difficult for newspapers.
The phone doesn't ring, emails dry up, essential services are operating at a bare minimum and nobody really wants us to break into their day.
We are entirely reliant on breaking news with Anzac services the blindingly obvious starting point for this edition.
And often we are operating on the bare minimum of staff; allowing several of our hard-working colleagues time with their families.
No such luck for Roger, Amy, Paul and Duncan who were up at the crack of dawn this morning, using their complementary skills to bring you coverage of this most important day.
A former editor of this newspaper had an excellent quote for occasions like this: "there's always just enough news to fill the paper". There has to be. That is our job. That is what you expect for your $1.40.
But it can be a difficult assignment when the world doesn't want to know you.
A normally frenetic day, where there is never a spare minute and lunch is eaten at the desk, replaced by silence and conversation about what might be open for the purchase of lunch, is difficult to adjust to.
At Easter I found myself killing time by Googling my name. It was an enlightening exercise. One of my columns on Ironman training ended up on a website specialising in reviews for exotic massage parlours worldwide. The headline "Harden up, Harding" was, I suppose, a natural attractant for their search engine.
But after flicking through 70 pages in 30 minutes I was done, and there were still several hours of managing ... er, very little ... to get through.
This morning my attention turned to our healthy text column, and, "Hello!", it struck me how quickly we accept new terms and words.
"Hands up", "lol", "push play", "chill", "old school", "Not!" are just a few recent examples. Although my personal favourite is "shame on you". It's sort of a "thumbs down" with a bit more grunt, sometimes abbreviated to the truly snarly "shame".
Anyway, shame on me for diverting my attention away from the office silence. Time to get back to work. The Anzac stories and pictures will be arriving soon.
It's awesome working on a public holiday. All good.
It's 11am and in just over 10 hours the printing press will magically roll.
By about 2pm, police determined the package posed no threat.