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My days on the road for 2018 are done. It’s time to hunker down at Chez Moodie for a few days, enjoy family, friends and festive fare and gradually wind back the stress levels that have been wound as taut as a bowstring in recent weeks.
On that note, I chuckled at the rather uncharitable pre-Xmas message from our peers at Travel Retail Business this week coinciding with the publication of their new print magazine. “In a month where other travel retail media either do not publish an issue or produce a ‘light’ version of their magazine, TRBusiness is pleased to continue offering its readers an edition packed full of in-depth interviews etc etc,” intoned a distinctly un-Christmassy Luke Barras-Hill.
Luke is a nice young man but he’s either hit the Christmas Day sherry a little early or he doesn’t realise we live in the digital age.
I can assure him that there has been nothing “light” about The Moodie Davitt Report editorial factory this month. In fact, it has been in full pre-Christmas production this past week, with not one, not two, but three e-Zines (electronic ‘magazines’ Luke), all bumper issues, all produced on time and of a quality that makes me extremely proud. That on top of a barrage of first and/or exclusive web stories and we’re far from finished for the year yet, let alone moving into ‘light’ mode.
That is the simultaneous opportunity and burden of digital media, in fact. We inhabit a global industry, which means that the flow of information is no respecter of time zones, festive seasons nor holidays. I am at my desk on Christmas Day and judging by my e-mail flow, so are a lot of people (or they are walking the shop floor).
I will, though, put my keyboard aside and my feet up in a couple of hours and enjoy a long (and most certainly liquid) lunch with my family and trusty golden labrador Mikhali (the latter will be on the water, not the wine, I point out).
My favourite task of the year, choosing the Christmas lunch wine, is complete (this year I have opted for a 2007 vintage Laurent Perrier Champagne, a 2016 Chablis Premier Cru, a single vineyard Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc from my home country and, courtesy of Luke Maga at Distell, a Nederburg Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 that deliciously promises “primary fruit flavours of blackcurrants and cherries which have acquired a rich complexity with beautiful traces of dark chocolate and mocha”. Who even needs Christmas lunch when you’ve got a wine like that?
And then, in the blink of a reindeer’s eyelid, it will be time to resume ‘Moodie Davitt Light’ until year-end and beyond into the brave new world of 2019.