Days when we shared our triumphs and our tears in a heaving newsroom

HUMAN contact is all too rare in these digital days and the older we get, the more likely it is that it takes a funeral to bring us face to face again with old friends.

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As funerals go, this week's farewell to my former colleague Arthur Aston-Jones was a pleasant affair, reuniting dozens of ex-Derby Telegraph staff, all grateful to have known the man but also to have shared in the golden age of newspapers.

Arthur's was not a name known to Telegraph readers yet, without him and dozens of other backroom staff, the paper would never have hit the streets.

His 44-year career symbolised the vast changes in the newspaper industry, beginning as inky Evening Telegraph apprentice compositor (a mysterious art that would have today's kids gasping in disbelief) when 90,000 copies of the newspaper would roll off the presses each day before being ferried to newsagents by a huge fleet of vans.