20February1998

Friday 20 February 98
My dear folks,

Jones has gone to Portugal. I drove her down to Gatwick early yesterday a.m. & kissed her goodbye at the entrance to the terminal. Mave & I will have to cope alone for the next few weeks. It will only be a few weeks because she returns to London on March 19. She needed to go down early, largely because our dog rescue scheme was not working out. You may recall that Samson had been retrieved from a barrel at the bottom of the road, cleaned up & taken out to live with our friend, Sheila. Samson appears to have approved of the scheme, making himself thoroughly at home. But Sheila’s cats did not. And Sheila, who is elderly, struggled to manage him & incorporate him successfully into the household. Eventually, she wrote to us, confessing that the scheme had run into trouble.

So Jones persuaded two of our regular guests to take her out to Sheila’s to fetch Samson who has now moved to the Quinta. Jones believes fervently that a dog is for life! His arrival raises all kinds of other questions but none that need instant answers. In the meanwhile, Jones & our winter house sitters will walk & feed Samson who has taken up temporary sleeping quarters in my workshop. He will need to remain on a chain for much of the time, initially at least, while Noite adapts to the situation. How Noite copes remains to be seen, not that I have any fears on this score. Noite is one of life’s great survivors & has wooed and won over our house sitters in Jones’ absence, taking over their bedroom in due course.

Our plan is to drive down to the Quinta early in April. That depends a bit on the Beeb. But, all going well, we shall take the ferry – either to France or to Spain - & then amble down to the Algarve. It’s the first time we’ve contemplated driving down, something that Jones has always wanted to do. It appeals to me as well. Some of our guests regularly motor down but the drive takes at least 2½ days as compared with 2½ hours in the plane. Jones hopes to get the place ready for its summer influx in the meanwhile so that we can relax a little in April.

Back in London I have been working quite hard, with 3 long overnight shifts closed followed by 2 equally long (12-hour) day shifts. The working process in Online is very different to that in television which calls for a lot of interaction & frequent rushings off to the gallery or VT suites. In Online, people tend to glue themselves to their desks for hours at a time as they build up the stories they are working on. It’s very intensive & there’s minimal conversation.

The text for the story comes off the news wires. The pictures come either from television broadcasts or web-based picture-libraries. The audio, equally, comes from radio or TV, or from BBC radio files that are collated on databases to which one dials in. Experienced workers have half a dozen applications open on the desktop & whirl through them at bewildering speed. Finding stuff in the maze of ever growing files is an art in itself. Once you have, every picture needs to be processed, trimmed to size, filed & placed on the page. Each bit of audio has to be edited down, transferred to a Web-friendly format, filed & entered. (I haven’t had a crack yet at video editing!) The pages need to be laid out with sub-headings & breaks, for easy reading. And, of course, as the story changes or new pictures become available, so the pages are updated.

I had thought of myself as reasonably fluent on a computer. But I’ve felt this past fortnight as though I were learning to drive all over again, & being taught largely by people who could be my children. The place is full of 20 & 30 somethings. It’s not an old man’s game! The technology is so complex that a squad of “teccies” is constantly engaged in maintaining, uprating & fixing the awesome array of equipment. In spite of their 128 megabytes of RAM, the PCs sometimes slow down to speeds when you want to shake them in frustration. At times I’ve felt that I should have stuck to what I know. On the other hand I have learned more this past fortnight than the previous year - & it’s useful knowledge.

The schedule meant that I was working most of my last week here with Jones. On our last day together we drove up to Hampstead Heath in glorious sunshine for a long, reflective amble. The weather has remained unseasonably mild although the latest forecasts are warning us of a coming winter blast. No doubt, Mavis & I shall survive it.

Blessings ever
T