EDITOR: 14-year milestone a time of great memories

It's funny how certain dates that don't really matter much in the greater scheme of things, imbed in your brain .
Two such dates for me and July 1 and July 5.
It was 14 years ago, on July 1 that I boarded a plane from Brisbane bound for Auckland and a new life in New Zealand with my Kiwi fiancee.
Five days later - July 5 - I stepped through the doors of the Bay of Plenty Times for the first time. When I walked through the doors of the Bay Times on Thursday this week to mark 14 years with the paper, it was roughly the 3200th time I had entered the building to start a new day.
Over those 14 years I have managed to change seats a few times and the editor's job is the fifth role I have occupied in the editorial team.
And like any workplace there are names and faces from the past that always bring a smile to my face when I think about them.
Yes, there is no doubt that newspapers attract some interesting characters to its ranks and the Bay Times is no exception on that score.
But to protect the innocent and the living I won't go into the deeds performed by some the "characters" who have helped bring you your paper over the years.
Newspapers have always been renowned for their characters.
When I first joined the industry in Sydney in the early 1980s there was a legendary sports reporter on the Daily Mirror. His first name was John I think.
He had been covering rugby league and other sports and had written sports books most of his life but when it came to a game of verbal sparring with his colleagues, he had two left feet and both fitted in his mouth at the same time.
I can still vividly remember the day when he was being wound up by his workmates and came out with the classic line: "You are skating on hot water!"
I can assure you he wasn't trying to be clever, he had just mixed up his phrases badly.
The sports department cracked up that day and on the many other occasions he came up with similarly good lines.
This guy was so legendary with his comments there was a book that recorded his classic lines on a regular basis. That book must have been quite extensive by the time he retired his typewriter.
The other guy who sticks in my mind is one of the most famous/infamous figures in the worldwide media industry in the past 25 years.
His name was Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of London's Sun newspaper between 1981 and 1993.
This was the man behind such controversial headlines as "Gotcha", which reported the controversial sinking of the Argentinian battleship General Belgrano by a British submarine during the Falklands War, and "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster" about the comedian Freddie Starr placing his girlfriend's hamster on a sandwich and proceeding to eat it.
Both headlines set the tone for his reign over tabloid The Sun.
I worked at The Sun for a six-month period during that time and he was both a scary and an intimidating character.
He was the type of editor with whom you tried not to make eye contact and if he walked past, you did your very best to look engaged and desperately busy. He basically ruled by fear and intimidation and if he didn't like the look of your face, you were out the door.
As an Aussie in London, I didn't want to risk him hearing my accent and hoofing me out the door for just that reason.
But I did watch from afar as his sycophants followed him around nodding and praising his every move.
He was such an imposing character that you knew you had to be on his right side to get ahead. Fortunately for my colleagues in Tauranga, Mr MacKenzie has never been my role model.
Nevertheless, the 14 years I have had in Tauranga and at the Bay of Plenty Times have been great years. I don't know whether I will be here in another 14 years but if I am, I'm sure many more "interesting" characters will have crossed my path.