Diary of a Submissive by Sophie Morgan

Author:Sophie Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The move was both a long time coming and something that happened ridiculously quickly. I’d been at my paper for almost three years. The nature of regional journalism is very much that wages start low and don’t get too much better unless you can get promoted. There’s a straightforward process to go from trainee to senior reporter, and the next obvious step if you want to stay in the same company is to go for a specialty or move into management, the first rung of which is becoming a news editor.

I genuinely loved my paper, my patch and my newsroom. The people—both my colleagues and the people I talked to through the course of writing my stories—were, for the most part, interesting and good-natured, and our news area was big enough that there was always something good going on. But the fact was it wasn’t just me who loved the dynamic of the newsroom. There were no specialties available, and the news editor, deputy editor and editor had around forty years’ experience at the paper between them and weren’t going anywhere till it was time for retirement.

There was no chance of promotion, and while thinking about leaving made me sad, a couple of things made me decide it was time—first, the fact that my salary, even as a senior, made for a pretty frugal life once my student loan, rent and bills were paid, and second, that I missed my family more and more. My parents came to visit whenever they could, filling my fridge and taking me out for lunches and clothes shopping when they did in a way that made me hug them even tighter and feel even more bereft when they went home. I popped home for a weekend every couple of months to see them and my sister, but suddenly it didn’t feel like enough. Every time I saw them my parents seemed a little older—their hair flecked with a little more silver, always an anecdote about a trip to the doctors with a new ailment for one or the other of them. I wanted to be closer, to see them more regularly, although I wasn’t planning a full return to the nest, as I was pretty sure that the novelty of my moving home would wear off sharply once they had to live with me full time.

As there were no promotions available I did the next best thing for a journalist wanting to progress their career—I moved to a bigger patch and paper, where the money was slightly better and which, happily, was much closer to my parents. Of course, by the time I’d found somewhere to live the increase in pay had been eaten up, but my mom popped around a couple of times a week with portions of whatever new recipe she’d been trying “for the freezer” or a cake, which helped me eke my money out (and her lemon cake made me friends in my new newsroom—there’s only so much cake one woman can eat, after all).

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