My hopes for my first published piece of writing were dashed when I discovered that the article I had slaved over for most of a sunny weekend was re-written out of existence by the editors of The Crack. I picked up a copy from The Tyneside, opened it and turned to the page which alleged to contain my work. I stared at it for a few seconds before hastily flicking through the surrounding pages. It was there, assimilated and bastardised into some other junkified piece of lightweight nonsense: “This is the sweet Russian mother of Lomo invention”[?]… my name is actually written next to this rubbish. The worst thing is that no-one actually bothered to tell me that they didn’t like it; they just ripped it to shreds and scattered the remains onto their own creation. They argued that my piece was too heavy and they had no option but to re-write most of it. I concede that on hindsight, the article was little bit laborious in places which is partly due to my inexperience and lack of knowledge about what the average ‘The Crack’ reader wants to look at. The least they could have done was let me know. One of the joys of publishing your own website is that you don’t have to care about all this stuff; you just write what you what you want to write and the fact that someone is reading it is an added bonus. I guess I have to put it all down to a ‘learning experience’ and stick to writing for this site only for the time being.