11December1995

London: 11th December 1995
My dear folks,

It’s nearly time for me to rush off to work. So the briefest of notes. I slept today as I’ve seldom slept before. Normally I get to sleep around 10 and wake - at least for a pee - around 3. Then I try to go back to sleep again, with mixed success. Today I woke from a deep sleep with considerable surprise when the alarm went off at 6. So my evening started rather later than expected, or possibly my morning, depending on how you look at it. I’ve just had supper and Jones has brought me a cup of coffee.

The MP, Tony Benn, is busy giving his own account, quite fascinating, of the history and corners of parliament. He’s a radical left winger, but a necessary one I think, to put the rest of them into perspective. He’s also a man of fierce integrity which is rather more than one can say for most.

Jones says it’s been a lovely day. I must take her word for it. She took the plumber down to a problematic flat where he got the heating working again. It’s a time for heating, too, I can tell you. The temps - okay, don’t laugh, I know it’s chilly elsewhere - have been hovering around freezing for several days and most people, ourselves included, do not have double-glazing. This is bloody Britain, not Germany or Canada. The wind comes whistling straight through the cracks in the window frames. Last night, I set off for work in a proper pea-souper. Visibility was down to some 50 yards and you don’t realise how little that is until you try to drive through it. From our seventh floor office at the Beeb, the main street was dimly visible through the haze, the streets lights struggling to make themselves seen in the murk.

I got an email response to my Christmas letter today from a US correspondent, my first! I was very pleased, responding to it immediately and printing it off for Jones --- from a former NBC colleague of hers. Seems to have the perfect job, a three day weekend at work and a four day week at home in a beautiful area near New York.

Okay, my time’s up. Christmas is rushing at us. But I’ll have four days later this week to organise my life and my thoughts - and to write something more sensible.