Andy Writes

Profile: The Man Behind the Ink

I'm Andy Hawthorne. I was born in Coventry in a time when we still made things in factories. Cars, motorbikes and vans. They rolled off the production lines every day. I was born in the year Sir Winston Churchill died. And the year before England won the World Cup.

When I left school, work was as rare as rocking horse shit. But it didn't matter to me. I went into the army. Loved it. Travelled the world. Served my country like I said I would. When I arrived back in Civvie Street it took me a while to adapt. I've spent years building a career in operations management. This journey let me see the World Wide Web emerge.

I learned to code and stuck with it for years. Now? I don't code that much anymore. I lead people who write code. I encourage them to do it well.

This blog—if that's what you call these boxes on the screen—is a static sheet. No database, no logins, no cookie banners tracking where you buy your socks. You drop a file in a folder, you run a script, and the machine prints the page. It's like the old parish gazettes they used to hand out on Sunday morning. If you like what you see, stop me in the street and tell me. If you don't, keep it to yourself. I'm too old for listening to complaints.

Editorial Policy

• Truth: If a story is told in the snug, it's printed. If someone lies, we print that they lied.
• Aesthetics: Black and white. High contrast. Just like the ink on the newsprint that stained your fingers when you were a lad.
• Frequency: Sometimes twice a day, sometimes once a fortnight. The press rolls when there's something to print, not because some calendar says it's morning.