10September1995

London:Sunday My dear folks

This is my second consecutive 10 a.m. waking morning. Yesterday was bliss after a working spell of 4 nights & 3 days in just over a week that had me gritty-eyed & wobbly-kneed. We'll get on to this morning in a moment. I had every intention of sitting down to write yesterday, especially to Jones whom I'd promised a fax. But I was waylaid by my neighbours as I returned from a stroll to the shops in the late afternoon. Stefania, who lives in the basement, was aggrieved because the girl who lives immediately above her has the washing machine going half the day. It sounds more like a concrete mixer & sets the place vibrating madly. Relations are not of the best. Stefania cannot work out why the lady concerned & her (none too popular) new boyfriend need to spend half their lives doing washing. So we had a conversation during which I sought to calm Stefania's passions & find a harmonious & practical solution.

Then Herman (a designer) appeared from the back room where he has been labouring away for 13 hours a day this past fortnight in an exhausting attempt to clear several major projects. He badly needed some fresh air & a beer. As it happened, he had discovered a delightful new pub just over the canal. Of course, that was it! In other circumstances, I might have found the necessary excuses. But I had spent several hours myself with the assistance of the BBC Networking Club help-desk in a futile attempt to resolve two software problems that have plagued me for weeks. I ended up by simply deleting the infuriating programmes from the computer. The frustration was that one of them had been working perfectly until I tried to download from the Internet a later version which both refused to install itself & overwrote the previous one, making that useless as well. I am beginning to understand why it takes hundreds of clever people years & years to produce & (almost) debug a programme like Windows 95.

So we set off for the pub, a ten minute walk away. Now if anyone had told me that I don't know every road within ten minutes of the flat, I have wagered a sum that instant & lost. To my great surprise, they brought me out at a footbridge whose existence I'd never dreamed of. And just over the canal was the pub as they promised. Herman was very fond of the Belgian beer which was on tap & I came to understand why. We sat outside among a motley crew whose youth was their only common feature. A couple of guys drifted up in their Ferrari & then drifted off again with some discreet engine revving. Herman & Stef defended the carnival, which they had attended the previous week & greatly enjoyed. I was pleased to hear it. The day improved.

Then we needed supper. As it happened, a favourite Portuguese restaurant of theirs lay within easy walking distance. We set out along the road & over yet another canal footbridge I was unaware of (shame on me). The restaurateur was an energetic woman who conversed as easily in Italian as in Portuguese or English. The staff were Portuguese & so was the food. I had the kind of chicken piri-piri that Jones dreams of. H & S preferred grilled sardines. We selected a wine from Borba in the Alentejo, an area Jones & I had recently visited. I don't think we should have had the second bottle. But that's the way things go. I went out like a light on my return but awoke at 2. Not even the thickest prose on the nature of artificial intelligence could render me sleepy again. So I read & listened to the World Service until 5 when I eventually dropped off.

The flat, I must tell you, gleams with a strange light. Maritsa arrived on Thursday morning for a badly-needed autumn clean. Maritsa is a young Colombian woman (Morning Mr Terry, how are you?) of strong character & great energy. The only way she knows of cleaning is to drive the dust & dirt forth as if they were devils. Her rates, while modest, are substantially higher than the pittance paid to the army that descends on the capital's offices at dawn each morning. She is worth every penny but has had fierce contests with new employers who have had the temerity to challenge either her methods or her fees. You have to accept Maritsa & Maritsa's methods as a package deal. But if you can do that, you get a great job. She returned on Friday to finish the flat, departing just as I got home. So the place is immaculate, deep cleaned in places that most cleaners don't reach.

11 p.m. Getting on for midnight. It's a lovely quiet time when I can reflect & write without fear of interruption. Sunday night also offers the best TV of the week. I have watched four programmes tonight, each nearly an hour long; on the debunking of fraudulent gurus (by members of the Rationalist Society) in India; an archaeological investigation in Egypt & Israel; on events which led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia & the subsequent Balkan wars, & finally on sexually-active Catholic priests, including paedophiles. They were all fascinating & thought provoking. I am grateful yet again for the quality of British television. What a boon! Sunday night ends with a summary of the week's developments in the OJ trial, a theatre whose cynical script not even Moliere could have equalled.

I drove Herman & Stef down to a kennel in Hampshire this afternoon to visit their dog, Jessica, who is in quarantine. She comes from the mountain village in Italy where they have an apartment, an abused stray who adopted them & with whom they fell in love. So they brought her back to Britain. While you can take dogs across other European borders with no fuss at all, here in Britain they still have to undergo six months of quarantine to ensure they are not rabid. The law has long been overtaken by modern medicine but, as it seems to keep kennels in business & its overhaul offers little political gain, it remains on the books - & is strictly enforced. Pity the poor animals that have to spend a miserable six months behind bars. One, pointed out to us by an attendant, has spent four six-month spells in quarantine, half its unfortunate life.

Anyhow, Jessica was overjoyed to see her owners & spent a rapturous 30 minutes loving them & being loved. She's a typical Mediterranean dog, small, furry & brown, whose cousins are to be seen curled up on every street corner from Faro to Athens. She is due for release on Christmas Day when the question is how she will be greeted by Poohpooh, the cat which already resides in the basement flat. Mavis, who includes the flat on his daily tour of duty, will also have to revise his habits. Anyhow, we lunched at a delightful little pub close to the kennels & then drove back in the same drizzle that had accompanied us down. There are warnings tonight of heavy rain across the south of the country - & Jones reports more rain from Portugal. Hallelujah!

My quest for enlightenment continues. I have finished reading Paul Davies's The Mind of God for the second time, again without the assurance of having got to grips with it. But it's a marvellous book, full of insights & one in which, as it happens, he makes frequent reference to the ideas of Roger Penrose. The latter is a Nobel prize-winning Oxford mathematician who has set out his ideas of what makes the universe & us tick in a large tome entitled The Emperor's New Mind - concerning computers, minds & the laws of physics, as he puts it. On this I embarked hopefully last night. It lacks Davies's tidy prose & is full of formulae that I don't understand. Mathematics was always a mystery to me. But Penrose assures readers that they can skip these if they choose & reviewers promise valuable rewards for those who persist.

At work, I have moved from the hourly TV bulletins to the breakfast current affairs programme, Newsday. I gather that World Service TV, which has until now been partly visible on M-Net overnight, will soon be taken overnight by the SABC. So those of you in SA will soon be able to form your own judgements. I have also managed to wangle six days off at the end of the month when I plan to slip down to Portugal for a breather. My appetite for such breaks grows with each one I take. If my pension were in a less parlous state, I could easily be tempted to go "casual". I simply cannot imagine how those people cope who have to manage on a fortnight's leave a year. Horrors! Give me 12-hour shifts, call-ins, night work, unsociable hours; I'll take them all as long as I can slope off regularly. When I see all those glassy-eyed commuters stuck in their cars morning & evening, I give thanks for small mercies. And after I've viewed the latest pictures from the Balkans or wherever, I give thanks for big mercies. Half of them are unbroadcastable.

Mind you, the unluckiest couple in the world must be the Americans who arrived at Tahiti airport at the same time as a mob of enraged Tahitians bent on destroying it after the French nuclear test at Mururoa. The man, interviewed against a background of flaming buildings, confessed that they were on honeymoon. They had looked for somewhere dreamy, he confided & opted for Tahiti. The poor dears, fingered by fate! At least they'll dine out on it for years.