30March1998

Monday 30 March 1998,
My dear folks,

Good morning. We woke early and came downstairs for coffee & and a brief unspoken consideration of the start of the rest of our lives. This pleased Mavis no end. He comes upstairs in the early hours & either makes himself comfortable on the bed or sits in the nook patiently awaiting the signs of life that precede his breakfast. (For the benefit of those who have enquired about his future welfare, I can only say that we are giving much thought to it. Jones is worried that he may not like Portugal so we are casting around in London as a first resort!)

Yesterday went quite slowly in spite of several intervals for small celebrations with the shifts of TV colleagues on the far side of the glass panels that separate them from Online. I had taken pains to keep my going as low key as possible & with a few inevitable exceptions, they were in ignorance of my departure. So their surprise on my handing out glasses of bubbly corks was great. I was much envied & assured that I would be greatly missed. The testimonials started to sound, as I pointed out, like an obit, & I had to take refuge in a few additional glasses to restore my nerves.

At the end of the day, I walked down the familiar corridors, through the courtyard & past the television studios to the bike shed, with a sense of crossing a watershed. However, I have been importuned by both Online & TV News to let them the moment I am available for freelance shifts & in this world nothing is impossible. I could take my redundancy money & return in “foive Moondays” ‘World’s’ Irish roster organiser assured me, adding that he would be very pleased if I did. Although it’s reassuring to know, it’s not part of the plan. The thought occurred to me that I liked nothing so much about the BBC as the leaving thereof. But I’m not sure that it’s true because I worked with some splendid people & I shall really miss their company.

I had a small celebration with my wife when I got home, just in time to avoid a shower. We opened a bottle of bubbly that has long lain in the fridge awaiting the occasion. We kept half an eye on the TV where BBC 2 is doing a compelling series on evolution & the waves it created & continues to create. One of the first things I want to do in Portugal is to put in a satellite dish in order to enjoy the benefit of the BBC channels available by satellite.

On the Shirland Road front, after talks with my neighbours and the woman who owns two of the flats in the house, a deal has been agreed in principle. The neighbours, who live in the basement flat, are to buy the ground floor flat from the woman concerned. She, in turn, is to buy our flat from us. This will save the neighbours a lot of money & give them the benefit of owning adjoining flats in the lower half of the house while the lady concerned will own the top half. With any luck, all this will happen some time in June.

Jones has spent much of her last few days in London running around, where possible with Bevan, looking at flats. He was impressed by a superb if somewhat pricey studio in a fine block in St Johns Wood but turned up his nose at the much cheaper ex-council flat I described in my last letter. Jones & I continue to give consideration to purchasing another foothold somewhere in Britain after the sale of Shirland Road. Jones would like to stay in London: I would like to move out, if only for price reasons. So we’ll see.

That’s the state of play. For many good wishes, thank you. After some reflection, I have decided that I’ll probably be a YAP rather than an OAP for the next few years.

Blessings,
T