8December1995

London: 8th December 1995
My dear folks,

How are you all, so far flung? Thank you Cathy for your brief answer-phone message. We look forward to a fuller report in due course. Mum, you remain much in our thoughts. And you, too, Calgarians, as you go about your busy lives. My own has been no less busy. I finished my third overnight shift this a.m. Our team is short of its leader and we are thinly spread. I was occupying the post of News Supremo, overseeing the 12 news bulletins, summaries & headlines that are distributed throughout our 3-hour current affairs programme. This, I may tell you, is two full-time jobs on its own. Coping with arriving programme guests & arranging for taxis proved an unwanted extra burden. There was a cock-up with the taxi ordered for the astronomer, Patrick Moore, so we had to ask him to find one himself & I paid for it. I have a grubby card with £8.60 scribbled on it from the cabbie, a sum which I shall endeavour to extract from the BBC in due course.

Moore had come in, needless to say, to talk about the Galileo Mission to Jupiter. It’s one, I suspect, in which the extraordinary computer graphics used to illustrate the mission will inevitably outshine the real pictures, due to arrive back on earth early in the new year. I found it very exciting, visiting the planets of our system. I often wonder how a conversation might go with an ancient Roman or Greek who was transported into the 21st Century to find planes & cars & computers had replaced the chariot & abacus. I suspect the real shock for such a visitor would be finding that while technology had changed radically, people hadn’t. They were just as hollow as ever.

Anyhow, I got back for a couple of hours’ kip & then cycled over early in the afternoon to Islington to renew Penny’s computer lessons. It was cold but the sun was out, a bit milky & thin. It followed 3 icy days when snow & sleet reduced the south of England to a state of inglorious chaos. A little snow comes to southern England every year & it never fails to cause havoc. The ring-road around London - a 100 mile, 3 to 5 lane highway - got itself hopelessly clogged with motorists who found their 45-minute journeys taking the whole night. The police blamed the motorists, the motorists blamed the gritters, the gritters blamed the weather, the weather continued regardless.

There was a pretty cover of snow over cars & gardens for two days. I confess I used the car to get to work as roads were both busy & icy & temps were below freezing. I had to scrape the windows clear. By this afternoon, the snow had all melted away. I was sorry to see it go. It’s magic while it lasts & it doesn’t last very long in this part of the world.

It’s been pouring down over Portugal as well, for which we’re grateful. We had to hire a gardener to cut down the remains of a tree that had collapsed over our fence during a storm. It took him, our tenant & a chainsaw the better part of a day to dismantle it. I’m told we have firewood sufficient for many chilly nights. I hope so. It wasn’t cheap. Jones is settling back into a routine of walks along the Canal to Sainsbury, domestic tasks & learning Portuguese. She has arrived this minute with a top-up of wine. We shared a glass & a bath earlier. Fats, she informs me, missing from his usual spot beside the hot water radiator, is settled in her suitcase in the nook. He never fails to find the most comfortable spot for the moment & to spread himself out like the Queen of Sheba.

Tomorrow we are to join Penny & Richard at the Italian film, El Postino, which has been highly recommended. Then we’ll continue on to supper. Sunday night I begin another 3 night shifts. Then things ease off in the lead up to Christmas. I do look forward to our gathering in Germany. We have been practising on exotic liquors at work the past few nights, just the merest sips you understand. The bulletins team put up some Slivovitz, the only energy form still widely available in the former Yugoslavia; I responded with Becher liqueur from the Chech republic, a hitherto untasted gift from a friend who went there some years ago. Both just the thing at 4 in the morning. Get-younger potion, I informed the team! They like the notion.