It was pleasing at the weekend to see in the most-excellent A2 section, Age journalist Raymond Gill venturing into print for a review, of sorts, of the new home of the old Spencer Street Soviet, a name the Age got primarily because of its left-leaning coverage as much as for the communistic-style brutalist architecture that was the old Age building.

Raymond Gill, arts writer and resident culture vulture of the old girl (my affectionate term for the paper that was home to me for almost 20 years of my working life) is a thoroughly decent bloke, just as Millie was thoroughly modern (for the 1920s), to add a theatrical flavour.

But plllleeease, Raymond, a few points from your colourful piece that stuck in my craw, not the least being the difficulty in having a morning paper delivered to nearby (to The Age) apartment dwellers, or as you put it:

“Few have worked out how to deliver a newspaper to your apartment door, which means lobbies at dawn are filled with residents in Tweety Bird towelling robes squabbling over papers.”

That’s a scenario, Raymond, not confined to inner-city apartments, and I would also dispute the Tweety Bird bit.

What about the story of a week or two ago when The Age apparently had a problem with a drum on the press at its Tullamarine printing plant? The way I’ve heard it, there was no one in Melbourne capable of fixing the problem and someone from Sydney had to be flown here to sort it out. Really, that’s what I heard.

“Your papers will be late,” the circulation rep told an inner-suburban newsagent of my acquaintance, “They should be there by seven.” Subsequent phone calls said “eight, nine, 10,11”, which is when they arrived.

What was really on the money, I’m told, is that the newsagent received two faxes from The Age circulation department that night just before six, advising “Your papers will be late this morning.” And nary a Tweety Bird robe involved.

On we go to your references of the security staff at the old entrance of The Age, and I quote:

“The female security enforcement officers who would splutter: ‘Show us yer pass’ between chomps on a Four’N’Twenty [a gratuitous free plug to a company name, something that The Age once would have frowned upon] when we arrived at work.”

The bottom line was that if you had a pass, as far as I can recall, there was no need to show it to, or talk to, anyone. Swipe at the panel on the door, go in, jump into a lift and stop off at the canteen for pie or whatever and then get on with it. As for the pies at security, perhaps they were eating lunch and you were late arriving.

As for the tag  security enforcement officer, that’s a bit over the top. I always thought of them as  workmates, actually, and always mostly up for a chat.

And this was after you’d been elitist in the extreme, Raymond, suggesting that the paper had moved from “its old headquarters at the Altona end of Lonsdale Street to a swanky (I hope that wasn’t rhyming slang) new home on the corner of Collins and Spencer streets”.

Jesus wept. The Altona end?

But on you went, and Jesus was still reaching for more tissues, “as staff dribble back from summer holidays to be greeted by smiling  ‘concierges’ — your quote marks, not mine —  instead of teeth-picking  bouncers.”

Raymond, did you ever stop to speak to the supposed teeth-picking bouncers? … I did. Nary a tooth picker among them. In fact, decent folk, all. I’ll take it as a no.

Then you waxed lyrical about the glass everywhere and the fabulous pristine surfaces upon which you work, leading you into a Sandra Sully moment (you have my heart-felt sympathy on that one. Well no you don’t. The only place you’ll find sympathy is somewhere between sycophant and syphilis in the dictionary) and then on to a concept “of us being a happening 24/7 caffeine-fuelled, wise cracking but steely focused media centre enforced by the banks of video wonderwalls that keep us up to speed with the 24-hour news cycle while also allowing us to keep tabs on reruns of Oprah talking spiritual epiphanies with the short chick from Desperate Hausfraus” speaks volumes.

Yep, hard-core, precise journalism, the sort upon which The Age forged its reputation; Oprah and those desperate sheilas from that other thing.

And let’s please not mention your paper mache-making attempts at recycling and how the stuff magically disappears in the dead of night.

By the way, is it true that the editor’s office in the new building was set up (at the behest of a previous powerbroker) almost a cut-lunch walk away from the rest of the troops because of a fear of a terrorist attack? That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.

But I digress.

I have plenty of friends working at the new Age building and unlike Raymond Gill, they are under no illusions of journalism being linked to metrosexuality or window shopping at Henry Buck’s (another gratuitous mention) or a quick buffalo mozzarella and ruccola panini because of the new location. Position, position, position, you called it, Raymond.

The cry, instead, should be edition, edition, edition, as most of my mates are more concerned with the security (or is that insecurity?) of their jobs, and of restoring circulation and arresting the fall of ad revenues.

And what about the title that should be the new moniker of The Age now that the  Spencer Street Soviet is no more?

How about the Collins Street Comrade? Or perhaps the Docklands Dictator?

Any other suggestions? Please.

Oh, and by the way, Raymond, it’s worth pointing out that the new Age address is, in fact, now closer to Altona  than the old building.