8May1995

London: 8th May 1995
My dear folks .
Monday night & nearly bedtime. But time enough for a few words to fax to you in the morning. See what happens when you work in Television. You stop writing in sentences & revert to phrases & clauses. TV journalists are meant to let the pictures tell the story & just help them along, rather than make a series of related statements as in radio. Well that's as may be & not of much use at all when there are no pictures. I have to tell you that I am not enthused about this stream of consciousness stuff. Give me a nicely constructed sentence any day. Which brings me pretty close to the end of a paragraph with little of consequence writ. Sometimes, that's how it goes.

It's been a day of pageantry on a vast scale across Europe. Our producers worked themselves into crispy frazzles with constant live crossings to Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, France & Germany. I found myself saddled, at short notice, with responsibility for a programme I had never worked on before (in addition to my own) & promptly began popping bulbs of my own. Felt like driving blindfold at high speed. Lots of people kept on asking me questions to which my inevitable response was: What do you think? Whatever they thought, we did. In the end, it worked!

Of course, Queenie & Queen Mum (nearly 95) did their thing on the balcony at Buck.P, reliving their appearance of 50 years ago. And the show carried on at Hyde Park all day, with Vera Lynn still in glorious voice half a century later (unlike Cliff Richard, who looks still looks better than he sounds). Amazing! You can see the difference but you can't hear it (not easily). The events have been all over TV this evening together with the nation's favourite entertainers & all the old songs, most of which I rather like.

It's much cooler. I found Mavis outside on my return. He marched upstairs with me, demanding supper instantly, & then retired for the night. This morning, as I descended the stairs, he shot down ahead of me and lost his footing on a belt I'd left lying there. He slid down four steps, found his footing at the bottom & promptly looked up to see if I was laughing at him. I kept a serious face for the occasion but kept on bursting into shrieks of laughter in the shower.