25August1995

London: 25th August 1995
My dear folks,

I've a night off, with 3 behind me & 3 ahead. I'm paying for the delightful break I had in Portugal last week & have no regrets. Last night was heavy, easily the hairiest I can remember. I took over as bulletin producer at 0100 just as NATO launched the biggest attack in its history. Fortunately, we'd been tipped off that the smelly stuff was about to spatter. But when it happened, our rudely-woken correspondents in Sarajevo could tell us only that planes were flying overhead & that there were big bangs in the surrounding hills. It makes for awkward interviews. The planned bulletins for the next 3 hours disintegrated into extempore theatre. In the last one, I dropped seven packages as we took in NATO spokesmen, correspondents & military analysts instead. Interesting stuff!!

The previous evening, I made the mistake of thinking I could cycle to work by skirting the Notting Hill carnival & ducking through the traffic, which I knew would be awful. I was wrong. The pavements were so congested with people & the roads with vehicles that I made no progress. Then I made a worse mistake by trying to wend my way through the carnival itself. The noise was shattering, the crowds were full of booze & the roads were ankle deep in litter. Definitely not my scene! I squeezed through bodies for 100m before becoming wedged fast. After 10 very frustrating mins, I managed to extract myself & reach the canal path which was virtually clear. I cycled up that instead, passing only a few lone anglers & a man walking with 2 women whose idea of humour was to offer me a fiver to show them my willy. I arrived at work 20 mins late & in very bad humour.

When I returned through the deserted streets at 8 a.m. the following morning, the gutters were awash with a trail of cans, bottles, broken glass & other crap in twin lines that looked like dirty snow ploughed from the centre of the road - a la Canada. These ran, unbroken, for most of my route home. The clean up crews were just starting their mammoth task. The carnival sank even lower in my estimation - if that's possible. I am joining the NIMBY society tomorrow. Let them have their carnival but far away from me. I really come to understand in its fullness why the middle classes desert the inner cities of grim estates, dirty streets & noisy people for the pristine suburbs.

I slept today until early afternoon & then cycled first to the bank to pay off my Barclaycard account (whose sum always seems larger than its parts) & then to Sainsbury's to top up supplies. First & foremost, Mavis's cat-goo had run out & he was not impressed with the measly portion he got last night. I made up for it with an extra generous helping this evening. He is now sunning himself under his lamp on the couch.

The highpoint of my week was definitely getting an email message from Fregs & Gary in Johannesburg. They have merged their names in an email address. Fregs has been almost as antipathetic to personal computers until now as Jones. So I was as astonished to get his missive & very pleased - & promptly plastered him with my 4-page Portuguese letter. It gives me hope that I may yet reach Hambach & Calgary on email as well - so cheap, quick & easy! Here, I have gone the whole hog &, after purchasing the final version of Windows 95, joined the Microsoft Exchange on a test basis to compare it with the email/Internet access service I get from the BBC club. I have now got two email addresses & can send messages between them. Fascinating old world!