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The Dog Ate Their Homework

Thomas Jones · Contributors' Excuses

On 1 March 1930, the New Statesman published the following announcement:

Our literary editor, Mr R. Ellis Roberts, had his bag stolen on Wednesday. It contained a number of letters and contributions unexamined. Will his correspondents please accept his apologies for any delay or neglect caused by this misfortune?

(I happen to know this only because Roberts was my grandmother's uncle.)

Alert readers of this blog may have noticed occasional lulls in the appearance of posts. Inevitably, we always hope for more contributions than ultimately materialise. And so, to fill a gap, and in the spirit of the old Statesman, here are some of the better excuses we've received over the past few weeks (anonymous, of course, to spare the contributors' blushes):

internet explorer on laptop went on blink
The NYT has been breathing down my neck all week
If you pay in food or childcare that might be an incentive?
my head weighs too much right now to sit up
the Church of Scientology would sue me


Comments


  • 21 October 2009 at 5:50pm
    Phil Edwards says:
    You are clearly using *entirely* the wrong type of contributor. (Mind you, now I come to think of it I've got two reviews outstanding, one of them so outstanding they've stopped asking for it. Academia corrupts - I was incredibly punctual when I was writing for money.)

  • 22 October 2009 at 8:12am
    Martin says:
    I was struggling to remove a chip off the old writer's block.