Lest we forget

Exclusive to AMP members – Mirror Pensioner magazine

Members of the Association of Mirror Pensioners receive two printed 12-page Mirror Pensioner magazines every year – in the spring and in the autumn. 

It’s not available online, so the only way to read this exclusive publication is by being a member of the MGN Pension Scheme, and of AMP.

As the next issue of Mirror Pensioner enters production, here’s a snapshot of the previous eight front pages illustrating the wide range of subjects and projects covered.

If you’re a member of the MGN Pension Scheme (either as a pensioner or deferred pensioner, a staff member still working, or a pensioner’s dependant) but haven’t yet joined the Association, you can do so here: https://www.mirrorpensioners.co.uk/join-us/

It costs only £10 for a lifetime membership – what a bargain.

Want some advice on ageing well?

AT A  recent “Health and Wellbeing” roadshow in Sevenoaks, for some reason I was directed to a presentation on “Ageing Well”. Once I got over my indignation, I learned a lot. There’s so much help and advice out there if you know where to look. Your local council and NHS Trust will have interesting and practical links.

And our friends at AGE UK have developed programmes to help the oldies to live well and longer, including:

Stay active – and start now! The good news is that it’s never too late to start. When it comes to physical activity, small changes in later life can lead to major benefits down the road.

Prioritise yourself – It’s unsurprising that staying active often falls by the wayside. But as the saying goes, you can’t pour from an empty cup. Regular activity is great for our bodies, now and in the future, and it’s also good for our minds, reducing the risk of stress, depression and anxiety. The better we feel, the more we’re able to do –for ourselves and for others.

Make movement part of your everyday life – Movement is our secret weapon to staying strong. There’s no need for marathons or gym memberships (unless that’s your thing) – every bit of activity counts, from walking the dog to mowing the lawn. One of the best ways to get more movement back into your life is to replace time you’d usually spend not moving much with small chunks of activity. This might look like: taking the stairs over the lift; parking the car further from your destination to get some steps in; setting regular reminders to stand, stretch and move around if you work at a desk, or sit on the sofa watching TV for long periods.

Focus on strength and balance – Strength and balance are key to ageing well. Prioritising these helps maintain independence and can prevent falls later on.

Think functional fitness – Functional fitness involves movements that help your body lift things, push and pull, squat down and get back up again, twist and balance. It helps with co-ordination and flexibility, and works to target your whole body rather than just one or two muscle groups.

Get active with others – Whether you grab a takeaway coffee and go for a weekly walk with a friend, or join a local sports club or class, making movement something sociable that you look forward to is a great way to embed it into your life. There are benefits for your mental health and wellbeing too. Group activities don’t just keep you moving – they keep you connected, and research shows that the quality of our connections influences how well we age.

Maintain your independence– As we get older, it’s natural (and kind!) for other people to want to make our lives easier, whether that’s carrying our bags or giving up their seat on public transport. But actually, it can be good to keep doing as much for ourselves as we can, for as long as we can.

Thank you AGE UK! For more information, click this link: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/ You can also input your postcode to find out local services and health and wellbeing advice on such as Arts & Crafts; Bridge group; Coffee mornings; Friendship clubs; Men in Sheds; Photography club; Pub lunches; Quizzes; Tea dances.

Image: PublicDomainPictures

Welcome to summer!

Here are some lovely quotes about summer. We think Wm Shakespeare’s got it about right!

“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” – L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.” – John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” – Henry James

“I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” – Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” – John Lubbock, The Use of Life

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.” – Tove Jansson

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” – William Shakespeare, The Sonnets

 

AMP annual meetings – see you there!

Here are full details of this year’s annual meetings. Hope to see you there.

Mirror Pensioner magazine – exclusive to members

It’s time! Your 12-page Mirror Pensioner has been dispatched to members. Have you got yours?

Inside: plenty of pensions news and data; full coverage of AMP activity and finances, including all the info about our annual meetings 2026. Plus Tony Patey’s Reach report; John Husband talks buy-ins; and far too many heartbreaking obituaries…

Features include Bingo bamboozlement; A meet up with Cassius Clay; Remembering Picture Post; Homage to Mr Crabtree.

Remember, Mirror Pensioner is exclusive to AMP members. If you are a member and your Mirror Pensioner hasn’t arrived, please let us know via the Contact Us form, or by sending us a letter. If you’re not a member and are kicking yourself for missing out on Mirror Pensioner (there are two issues a year) you can join AMP via this website – and if you’re quick about it, we’ll send you a copy of the most recent two issues.

And if you have a story to tell, or a suggestion for additional help or information in Mirror Pensioner, let us know.

Mirror Group reunion

Here’s an unmissable date for your diary – this year’s Mirror Group reunion – see poster. If you worked at 33 Holborn or Canary Wharf, or worked with people who worked there, the Chrisopher Hatton is the place to be on April 27 [2026]. See you there!

Rewriting the Bard

By Plainjohn Smith

The death of Tom Stoppard last November took me back to the days when he and I shared a typewriter.

In case this conjures up a misleading picture of myself and the great playwright hunched together collaborating on some new theatrical masterpiece, I should explained that it happened more than 60 years ago when Tom and I were aspiring young reporters on the Bristol Evening World.

In the paper’s ill-equipped newsroom, with its ancient candlestick telephones and scarred, scrub-topped tables, there was a daily scramble to bag one of the few available Remingtons. As there were not enough of these battered machines, I often ended up sharing one with Tom.

At the dawn of the Swinging Sixties, Bristol was a fiercely competitive newspaper city with a morning paper, the Western Daily Press and two evening papers, the Bristol Evening World and the Bristol Evening Post.

It became a magnet for ambitious journalists en route to Fleet Street, but it was the brash and breezy Evening World that seemed to attract the more colourful characters. They included a twinkle-toed feature writer called Hilton Tims, who lightened proceeding by periodically mounting one of the litter-strewn tables to tap dance and sing Powder Your Face With Sunshine, plus a pugnacious Glaswegian called Charlie Wilson, a former Royal Marine, whose rough and ready demeanour proved no barrier to a knighthood and editorship of The Times in later life.

On to this eclectic stage swept Tom Stoppard. In a pre-Beatle era when barbers knew only short back and sides, his curly, tousled hair was shockingly long and shaggy.He wore a long ex-Army greatcoat and an even longer, flamboyantly wrapped multi-coloured knitted scarf that dangled almost to the ground. With his dark, glowering Slavic looks, the man was straight out of Dr. Zhivago.

While most of us poorly-paid reporters gathered in the nearby Assize Courts pub drinking halves of bitter, the brooding Mr Stoppard enjoyed the more esoteric company of actors from the Bristol Old Vic. It was rumoured that he drank wine.

So it was that Tom was hunched reclusively in a corner of the reporters’ room on slow news day,  guarding one of the rare working typewriters and pecking out the paper’s around-the-town diary column.

Suddenly the news editor, Reg Eason, a man of erratic temperament who had reached Olympic standard in Throwing the Typewriter, sprang to life.

A road repair workman drilling on Park Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, had cut through a gas main. There was an explosion and a huge crater had opened up. The front wheels of a teetering double decker bus had become lodged in this crevasse. Some passengers had been injured and rush-hour traffic was approaching gridlock.

In the great scheme of things this unfortunate event may not rank as sensational. But for the Bristol Evening World, fast approaching the deadline for the noon edition, it ranked for drama alongside the Titanic.

Reporters scattered from the newsroom like the Red Arrows. Reg Eason, red faced with excitement, looked urgently over at Tom Stoppard who was still languidly chronicling the previous night’s activities of local luminaries.Hard news was not normally Stoppard’s domain. Besides doing the Diary he was also the theatre critic. Many a hapless juggler at the local variety theatre, valiantly trying to survive the dying days of music hall, had been advised of the inadequacy of his performance by one of Tom’s lacerating reviews that fequently made the famous Kenneth Tynan’s withering critiques positively benign.

But this was an emergency: BRISTOL BUS IN HORROR PLUNGE!

“Colour,” Mr. Stoppard,” barked Reg Eason. “Get up to Park Street and bring me bags of colour.”

Stoppard, in his Cossack overcoat and Dr Who scarf, disappeared moodily through the door like Heathcliff going on a reluctant blind date.

For the next 90 minutes I sat in the office, frantically pulling together and constructing a splash story from the flurry of accounts phoned in by reporters.

With less than 30 minutes to deadline I spotted the agitated figure of Ernie Averis, the chief sub, striding towards me. His well-worn cardigan flapped behind him and his glowing pipe puffed smoke like an overworked tugboat.

“Can you make some sense of this,” he snapped, thrusting a thick wad of copy towards me. “All I need is 12 crisp paragraphs for a sidebar and there are enough words here to wallpaper the bloody Mansion House!”

It was Stoppard’s colour story, dictated from the site of the crash. No one could say he hadn’t done a thorough job. Indeed, he had even managed to interview the unfortunate workman whose drilling had caused the chaos.

Unfortunately, such salient facts were immersed in a torrent of lyrical prose,  taking in everything from hovering blue skies to the banks of flowers that provided such an ironically peaceful backdrop to this rush hour tragedy. Along the way were musings on the human condition, reminders that fate controls our every moment, and some erudite philosophising on the twist of karma that had so explosively brought together drill and gaspipe.”Can you cut out the crap and knock this into shape,” pleaded the harassed chief sub.

So, surrounded by overflowing ashtrays, hastily abandoned canteen mugs and half eaten cheese rolls, I sat down to rewrite Tom Stoppard.

Mr Averis, meantime, stumped back to the subs’ room, despairingly clutching his forehead and wailing: “God save us from reporters who think they’re bloody poets!”

Stoppard image: WABI TV5. A revival of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is playing at The Old Vic (London) until March 21 [2026].

 

Remember 33 Holborn? You must watch this

IF you ever worked in the mighty Mirror building at 33 Holborn, step back in time here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWEqU8itBls

Former MGN ad man Johnnie French sent us the link, which plays a 1961 Brtish Movietone newsreel of the opening of the then revolutionary Mirror building in Holborn in 1961. It’s part of a massive collection of photos and newsreels curated by Associated Press (https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos).

The quality of the black and white film leaves a bit to be desired, but that all adds to the atmospherics of this 11-minute slice of precious Mirror Group history.

The commentary is dated and sounds very “old BBC”, all accent and nasal intonation, and the vehicles, clothes, hairstyles – and the moustaches – are clearly from the early 60s. But there are countless nuggets of sentimental delight. The exterior shots bring back memories, but it’s the social history which grabs the attention.

You may even recognise a few old faces! Enjoy “the building that never sleeps”.