10February1996

My dear folks,

It’s a grey & very quiet Saturday when the frantic scenes around the collapse of the Northern Ireland cease-fire have receded, for a few hours at least, from our lives. I was 11 hours into a 12.5 hour shift yesterday evening when a 1-line flash appeared on our screens saying the IRA cease-fire was in doubt. You will be familiar with subsequent developments. The next five hours were torrid. At least the rain had stopped & the wind had died down when I eventually cycled home. As I told Jones over a few glasses of rather pleasant Chilean wine (& as she remembered only too well) there are no rules when such an event takes place.

Instead of broadcasting to tight schedules, the service just goes into what we call “rolling mode”, dropping normal programmes & covering developments with live crossings to whatever experts, eyewitnesses, correspondents & politicians can be got either into the studio or on outside cameras or the phone. The newsroom simply erupts. For the producer trying to steer the ship from the gallery, there is no schedule to follow & little guidance. It’s blind poker, trying to play six screens & five phones for the next source & to keep the presenter five seconds ahead of it. It presented at least the rare spectacle of our large, cool & extremely efficient lady boss warmly kissing the cheek of an (excellent) off-duty producer who’d heard the news from home nearby & come in to volunteer his services in the gallery. It’s like volunteering for a firing squad.

Jones says she got cold shivers down her back when I recounted the night’s events & she expressed the firmest resolution never to have anything to do with television production again. It is, I concede, a funny way to make a living, selling noisy images to the public. At least it was the last day of a six-day schedule that was unusually heavy in order to allow me to swap days I need for some of our coming jaunts. Today’s silence has a deafening quality to it, with the uproar still echoing in my head.

It was great to find a series of un-BBC faxes waiting on my return. Thank you sister, especially, & thank you Mum again for yours of a day-or-two ago. We also had a fax from our tenants in Portugal to say the telephone line was up again & it had stopped raining. We have a Dutch lady who has moved into one of the cottages with 2 dogs but we’ve had little news of her so far. We assume all is well. There was also a fax from a little establishment in Brussels confirming our booking & enclosing a map.

Jones has recovered the watch Alan gave her some time ago & she is thrilled. It came off some weeks ago when she pulled off a glove while doing some shopping. She promptly went back to the possible outlets concerned to make enquiries but without luck. When she returned to the greengrocer her enquiry was remembered & the watch was returned. (I am still waiting in hope, Alan, for news of your computer.) She also set off on the opening day for the Cezanne exhibition at the Tate Gallery & was delighted to get in after only a short wait. Long queues had been forecast for the entire run. The exhibition has been all over the media & phone ticket sales are at a record high. Jones was much impressed by his work. I hope to see it myself, although it won’t be for a few weeks.

I’ve a flat to attend to this afternoon & we are dining with Penny & Richard this evening. Sunday night I return to work for another 3-night run after which we set out almost immediately for Brussels for another 3 nights. Keep your faxes rolling even if mine is a little quieter than usual.
Blessings ever
T