28February1994

London: 28 February 1994
My dear folks,

My basement neighbour, Herman, has just taken delivery of a new and extremely clever duplicator. As duplicator fundis will know, the days when a duplicator merely duplicated are long gone. It goes without saying that this duplicator does the old hat things like enlarging and contracting images and spitting out the appropriately sized piece of paper. It also acts as a scanner (for reading documents straight into a computer memory) and a printer. And - as my neighbour pointed out over a cup of coffee on Saturday morning - it does simultaneous dual-sided duplicating. That's to say that if I put pages one and two of my letter on the glass, it prints them simultaneously on the same piece of paper - no mean feat, even for a leading-edge duplicator. Herman intimated that if I cared to write a letter, he would be pleased to demonstrate his new toy's capacity. It was an offer I could hardly decline. So here you are.

Herman's toy, I may add, costs £7,000, about the same as a baby motor-car. I whistled too! He explained that as a designer he needed state-of-the-art equipment. The cost burden was eased by a leasing arrangement and tax benefits. "Of what use would a car be to me," he enquired rhetorically, "I can't make copies with a motor-car." To which Jones responded later that it was all very well but one equally could not drive to Waterperry in a duplicator.

Another week has passed. Jones worked close to a 24-shift last Sunday just in case NATO decided to zap some unrepentant Serbs. She didn't mind. She got Monday off, as well as the next two days (which were her due) and that made her happy. She turns 50 in July, as you may be aware, and has been talking to NBC about retirement. NBC have been sympathetic to her early departure. We still have discuss the implications with the NBC pension people. But the longed-for end is in sight. In fact, it's jolly close. What she still waits to hear is whether she'll be going to South Africa for the election.

And I? Well, on Monday and Tuesday I prepared my weekly Africa Programme, with an item on a crackdown by the government in Senegal on a bolshy Islamic party and irritating opposition group (the devaluation of the French-backed regional currency in francophone Africa has caused widespread unrest); another on elections in Togo (challenged by the loser in the usual African fashion), and the last on some scrapping between Nigeria and Cameroon over an oil-rich border delta region.

On Wednesday, I wrote a talk on the early release in Algeria of two of the Islamic leaders imprisoned by the military. To try to get a feel of the latest developments, I spent 15 minutes talking off the record to the British ambassador in Algiers and to an academic specialising in Algerian affairs. I tried also to talk to the most prominent of the exiled Islamic leaders, a guy who has been given "refuge" in Germany. But his relations, who answered the phone, explained that the Germans had told him to shut up or get out and he had chosen to shut up.

(Our coverage of affairs in Algeria and Tunisia has suffered from expulsion this week by the Tunisians of our correspondent in the region. The lad had quoted an exiled opposition leader and then reported - unlike the Tunisian media - on the challenge by an independent candidate to the President's bid for a third term in office. The Tunisians didn't like it. It's traditional for the president to be returned with a 99.9% vote and they don't welcome attention to minor candidates or scrutiny of the system.)

Thursday and Friday were devoted to a 15 minute programme on Somalia - where Western troops are preparing to pull out by the end of March? The slot is called Focus, a programme intended to deal with an issue of Arab interest each week. It's wide-ranging, however, and tends to steer away from specifically Arab affairs because they get intense coverage elsewhere. The Arab Topical Unit I work in also has 15-minute weekly slots for defence, trade and industry, energy, particular controversies (argued by proponent and opponent), and answers to listeners' questions.


Other sections in the department handle News, Current Affairs, Features and Music. It's the biggest and the oldest of the Language Services in the World Service and I regret that my attachment has but a few weeks to run. It's been an interesting and useful interlude.

Among other things, it has involved frequent interviews with both Israeli and Arab spokesmen including, on one occasion, the leader of the biggest of the settler organisations in the Occupied Territories. His solution to the conflict between the settlers and Palestinians was straightforward, get rid of the Palestinians. God had given the land west of the Jordan River to the Jews and that was the beginning and end of the matter as he saw it. I confess that my patience for people who hold divinely-mandated title-deeds has run short. So, while I was shocked at the Hebron massacre I was not surprised, given the radical Jewish settlement in the heart of the town and the rival claims to Abraham's supposed tomb. There are times when I wonder why an all-wise God permits religion at all. Certainly, in my part of the world, its products are more often grief and death than life and joy. (I know the arguments for free-will, predestination and the presence of evil but I'm none the wiser.)

Sorry, this has evolved into a heavy letter. No more heavy topics!

Jones was off over the weekend. We have to see more films, we decided. There is simply too much on that's good. So yesterday evening we walked 15 minutes down to the Whiteley's centre where The Age of Innocence, one of the five films recommended by The Independent, was showing. Daniel Day Lewis was the young, late-19th century New York lawyer choosing between the woman he was marrying and the one he loved (Michelle Pfeiffer). He made the wrong choice. But it was a splendid film nevertheless.

The other four recommended films are Schindler's List (Jones says I'll have to go with someone else; ditto for Jurassic Park which I still want to see), The Piano, In the Name of the Father and The Blue Kite. The Piano is next on our list. I know that In the Name of the Father is very good, but I regret that the producer has chosen to rewrite history in places and I distrust such "factional" productions, particularly when I have strong feelings about the issue under scrutiny to begin with.

From the cinema, we walked to the Elgin Lokanta for a diet-break and a superb dinner with two friends who have just moved into a flat around the corner. It's nigh on 15 years that we have patronised the Lokanta and we are given red-carpet treatment on our now rather infrequent visits (what with three apartments and two cottages to support!)

Today we went walking along the Thames at Cookham, a favourite route but one we haven't taken for ages. There were lots of other walkers too, well-clad against the gusting wind. Temperatures were actually well up. Dogs rushed around in circles of joy, fetching sticks, meeting other dogs, darting back to their owners for moments of mutual reassurance. We had a bag of mouldy bread for the ducks, but ducks were scarce, hungry ones anyhow. On the way back, I turned off to a shopping centre where windscreen repairs were advertised and had a man mend the impacted star that a stone had swatted during our trip up the motorway.

As I write, the Winter Olympics are closing. I've enjoyed them, a couple of hours most evenings, despite Tonya and Nancy. I thought of our Calgarians this evening as the Canadian ice-hockey team went down to a nail-biting defeat against Sweden in the final. Ouch! Still, the Canadians had a good games. They're taking home rather more medals than the Brits. As for the South Africans, I didn't see a sign or hear a word of them following the opening. Their time will come, no doubt, possibly with the next ice-age.