dorling kindersley books

We have to get half-a-dozen sample pages out to the printer for a sales booklet before the close of play tomorrow. We have no cover design. The team, working with Jake, includes Victoria, a switched-on organiser who spots a problem with relish, then demolishes it with ineffable logic; Richard E, a (maybe I should say the) designer whose work with bands such as The Kinks, The Who, the Small Faces, Pink Floyd and, naturally, the Stones, guarantees an impeccable pedigree - think Hipgnosis. He's met Syd Barrett for God's sake - he thinks like these people. The back-up squad: Thomas, a quietly efficient digital designer, who thinks before he talks; Lucian, whose music journalism background makes actually talking to him a strangely strange experience; and another Victoria - Vicki, fresh out of art school, who joined my department at the beginning of December and helped create a book on Islam. Off to the printer by Christmas. 192 pages in three weeks. Amyl nitrate in the flesh.

I should, but don't, miss my boss CJD's annual Christmas lunch/frolic/walnut-throwing orgy today, but stagger back long after dusk to find the team in place - Macs fired up and pages ready to roll. The sales booklet will go out with a simple typographic cover. The pages still need work but, hell, the magic, the excitement, is already there. It's like Christmas morning when you woke to feel the rustling weight of a stocking at the end of your bed. Come whatever, this is going to be good.