2February1997

Sunday 2 February, 1997
My dear folks,

February is upon us. The evidence lies above. You wouldn’t know it from the skies which are just as grey & dull as January’s. Jones is washing up. Mave bathes in the glow of his lamp, reflecting inscrutably on the things that occupy cats. I, of course, am at the keyboard, writing a short letter to you. At my elbow is an open copy of my guide to Word 97 which has lots of useful hints. We had been listening to a particularly pleasant Bach violin concerto over breakfast (porridge & treacle for me; toast & coffee for Jones) when the tape began to squeak. It’s almost as though there’s a squeak that hides in the tape cupboard & infects what ever tape I play. On the other hand, all our tapes are old. The squeak merely invigorates my arguments to install a CD player in the lounge & go over to CDs instead. At least, I think it does; especially as my collection of CDs in the study is beginning to overflow the CD shelf.

I tried putting on a video but the screen immediately threw a fit! I was about to junk the cassette when up came a message with a number to be called if the screen was unclear. Bingo! Jones had earlier in the week turned away a gentleman who rang the bell with a view to adjusting the video player to allow for the introduction of our 5th terrestrial channel. The channel is to occupy a bandwidth previously allocated to TV/video connections & as a result every video in the country has to be retuned. A friend of ours has taken a part time job as a tuner & was filling us in on his experiences. Anyhow, at the time Jones was ignorant of all this & rightly suspicious of people who rang the doorbell asking to retune the video. I have since rung to make an appointment. The irony about all this is that the exercise is costing Channel 5 a fortune only months before digital television hits the country with more available channels than beer cans in a railway embankment. Somebody is going to lose a whole lot of money!

Yesterday we topped up on culture, not before time. Penny & Richard came around to join us on a trip, first to Waterperry & thence to Oxford for an art exhibition. The day was cold, especially in the wind. We were none of us really as warmly dressed as we might have been & we walked briskly, through the fields, across the river & through the village of Waterstock – a favourite excursion. Back again for a Waterperry lunch – the food really is excellent – and thence to Oxford. There were signs warning us of a new traffic regime; no surprise, for the traffic into the city was wicked. It took us 15 minutes of queuing to get into a multi-storey carpark. (You may have been following the escapades of “animal” & “swampy” as environmental protesters now take to tunnels to try to frustrate road builders in Britain.)

As for the exhibition, well! I guess it depends on your taste. It was a collection of modern works ranging through large canvasses painted in a single colour to weird, finely-patterned works studded with varnished elephant droppings. The phrase “a load of shit” comes to mind. I’m sure that these things are partly a matter of taste & partly of education. And, while there were several creations that I quite liked, I suspect that the rest of the company got rather more out of it. I am deeply sceptical of the “it’s art because I say it’s art” school. But I am aware that I am also ignorant.
Even Jones, who has a better educated & more open mind on art, recently dismissed out of hand a “work” on display in Hyde Park, 2 full sized tip-trucks counterpointed against each other! Talk about bluffers & posers! I suspect that these days, “it’s art if you can sell it” – not that I can quite forget Van Gogh in this context.

We returned in time for a leisurely bath & supper with our basement neighbours, Stef & Herman. They had also invited former neighbours, Harry & Elaine, who had previously occupied the adjacent basement flat & whose departure a year ago was a matter of regret. Stef (who’s Italian) had done spaghetti & Herman grilled fish kebabs. He’s an excellent cook. It was a pleasant evening, useful too, as we are both planning to be away & there is always the matter of neighbours’ pets to be fed in one’s absence.

The first of those excursions for us takes place this coming Thursday when we have booked a day-trip to Lille on the Eurostar. Jones spotted a special offer in the papers some time ago & we thought a day in Lille could do us no harm. I dug some info on the Net & Jones got a whole lot more from the French tourist office. Fingers crossed for a sunny day, or at least no rain.

Next is our planned skiing holiday in Andorra (it’s a tiny little principality in the Spanish Pyrenees, Mum) from 16 to 23 Feb. This hangs in the balance, depending on medical advice. But we may well go anyhow, even if I do no skiing or very little. Finally, after some useful shift swapping, I have managed to free up the first week of March when we’re hoping to go either to the Lake District or possibly to Ireland. The Foleys have turned their cottage at “The Grove” into a splendid country hotel & it would be nice to renew our acquaintance with the family & the Kerry countryside.

Thereafter, Jones returns to Portugal. I am not at all clear about the rest of the year. I had hoped to get either an attachment or transfer to BBC News OnLine early on but you will gather from my last letter that this prospect recedes like a mirage in the desert of BBC management. What we do know is that World Service TV News is due for a major slim-down & shake-up in March when we try to recut our coats according to our diminishing cloth. Among other things, we are due to lose several dozen posts. Weirdly, all this is happening as the greater BBC plans the launch of 24 Hour News television for the domestic market, with the creation of new posts, so a lot of people may simple move across. How World’s 24 hour service will link up with the domestic service remains to be seen. In fact, virtually everything remains to be seen. What I have done is to seek leave for the fortnight bridging Penny’s wedding.

Enough, especially for a “short” letter! We are going for a walk & then I am going to have a kip & then I am going to work. One of my colleagues asked me to work tonight for her in return for a swap later in the week. It suits me well enough.

Blessings ever