15November1996

Friday 15 November
My dear folks,

Work is over! One day when I retire from the Beeb I am sure that I will have this mixed sense of relief at having the last shift behind me & uncertainty about how to fill the immediate spaces ahead. It was the same feeling that overtook me as a pupil shortly after the school term broke up for holidays. How we yearned for that last day that took so, so long to arrive, & yet the sweet sense of escape was always fleeting.

I had expected to work my usual shift today on the news desk. Instead, I had a late evening phone call earlier in the week, much to my surprise, asking if I could spend a second day with BBC Online, from ten to six instead of the usual eight to eight. It suited me just fine, even though I doubted that the newsroom could replace me at such short notice. But they did - partly, I think, because there’s a lot of BBC politics in this new venture and all the departments want feelers on how it’s going.

The answer is very slowly. The BBC quails at the prospect of pouring into a Website the huge resources that its competitors have committed - CNN & MSNBC both have scores of journalists at it around the clock. Constant leaps forward in technology make planning a nightmare. And since the BBC is partly a commercial animal, part licence-funded and part grant-in-aid funded, there’s all kinds of controversy over proposed ads & cross-promotion (using radio & TV to advertise BBC OnLine).

Much talk about using the Beeb’s vast resources & brand name to best advantage is about all we’ve had. No-one has a clue about what is feasible or what is permissible or how much money the Beeb will throw at it. The models presented to the bosses so far seem not to have won much favour. Until this week - if I say so myself - the organisers - not news people - had scant notion of how world news is come by. So a couple of us spent part of the day lecturing them on the realities of being an international broadcaster & they, at least, were wiser by the end of it. All that’s sure is that the project is going ahead; you can’t doubt that watching the ICL programmers beavering away at their terminals in the office adjacent to ours. I confess that I’m still tempted to seek an attachment, if only to learn a good deal more about computers.

Whatever the shortcomings, it was a perfectly pleasant day & a much shorter one than I’d anticipated. The sun shone & promises to shine again tomorrow. It’s cold morning & evening, with cars covered in rime at dawn. My ears burned in the sharp air on the ride into work on Thursday & tried to tuck themselves under my helmet. The days themselves are lovely though you need a coat or at least a jersey for any outings. I’ve enjoyed long faxes from Cathy & Jones - thank you both - Jones clearing up for winter & cutting grooves in the hills on her ever widening jaunts.

Rodrigo’s Concertos de Aranjuez and Andaluz - a new CD acquisition - brought me a lot of pleasure a little earlier. There’s not much TV worth watching on a Friday night. Now I’ve put on Carmina Burana to fill the time up to the midnight news. Mave has just come in from his night wanderings & demanded supper. My thoughts keep on going back to a young couple I passed on the way home this evening, she pushing a babe in a push-cart, he cursing her in the foulest language & loudest voice. Poor bastards. Tomorrow I’ll do a little packing & a little shopping & a little reading & a little thinking. I greatly look forward to seeing my brother & family in a couple of days time.

Blessings ever
T