31January1998

31 January 1998
My dear folks,

Hi on a grey Saturday morning. Jones is in the front room reading. Mavis has taken himself downstairs for a change of scene. Music is from the “Baroque Collection” by the King’s Consort. We’ve just read the latest emails from Chris in Trinidad & the Joneses in Cape Town. I have a mild cold; explosive sneezes have given way to an irritating drip. But it’s not interfering unduly with my life.

Bevan joined us for supper last night, fresh from his latest trips to Poland & the US. He had a hard time of it, especially after being assured by the Polish embassy that he didn’t need a visa & then finding that he did. He also has a lingering & bothersome cold. He suspects that living much of his life in aircraft is partly to blame. He is still commuting to London from his apartment in a little town half way to Brighton. But he will be moving to central London shortly, initially to occupy the mews house of friends of ours whose current tenants are moving out at short notice. Jones is acting as go-between. We plan to drive out to meet Bevan tomorrow and ferry some of his few belongings back into town.

As for us, Valmorel is history. I had the luxury of 3 days off before returning to work. The first thing I did was to drive 30 minutes out to north London to retrieve my computer from “Dan Computers”. The tape drive, instead of backing up files as it’s meant to, had been gobbling up tapes. Happily the computer is still under guarantee & Dan, as well as repairing the fault, replaced the shredded tapes. At the same time, I received in the post a long-awaited new connection for my scanner but the appliance still refuses to work off either of the computers. The suppliers have tested the scanner and assure me that the machine itself is not at fault. In short, it’s a pain!

Jones spent last Monday preparing a special dinner for two media friends. Our combined schedules are so complicated that we’d had to make the arrangement months in advance. Jones was a little nervous because, she said, she hadn’t really entertained for a long time. You wouldn’t have known it. The couple had just returned from a visit to RSA where they not only avoided being mugged but also had a superb time, with lots of photos to prove it.

On Tuesday I took the car around to Sam, the Lebanese proprietor of a pokey little garage beside the BBC. Sam has been doing the Rocket’s annual service & MOT test (required to re-license a car in Britain) ever since I moved out to TV Centre. We have a good understanding. Sam doesn’t like paperwork & prefers to take payment in cash. His office is a tiny cubicle strewn with invoices & notes. But I don’t have to pay for his receptionist & his customer relations executives & his shareholders’ profits & all the other extras I used to dread at the official V.W. dealer up the road. We got the car back, duly serviced & tested, that evening after walking to Shepherd’s Bush to fetch it, an easy hour’s stroll. The next day I renewed the licence, the parking permit & my AA membership. January is always my painful month for the car. But since the old lady goes for the rest of the year with hardly a murmur I can’t complain.

My other appointment was with a nice man at Equitable Life, the financial group that manages our modest investments for retirement. I spent an hour trying to get my head around the various options ahead of us and left hoping that we’d win the lottery first.

On Wednesday, I walked in to the dentist with Jones who needed to have a tricky tooth peered at. We found our elderly dentist in a state of some distress as his nurse & universal aide, Sharon, had just broken her ankle & he was having to cope alone. He was happy, at least, with the work he’d done on the tooth. Jones & I repaired around the corner to the Canadian muffin shop where we celebrated on low fat muffins & skinnicinnos (low fat cappuccinos). Jones is her normal slim self. I’d put on a couple of kilos since my big purge last year & am busy trying to take them off again. We’ve gone back on the wagon after our skiing holiday (although we do get off it from time to time). Jones prepares a large Tupperware container of fruit salad, topped with fromage frais, each day (or night) for me to take into the Beeb. It is the envy of my colleagues.

Thursday was back to the news desk. The dept. is still trying to come to terms with the cutbacks announced just before we went away. We had a letter from management expressing regret for the elaborate circus of decimating the dept. instead of announcing the wave of promotions we’d all been waiting for. There’s an underlying sense of gloom as the crew look around for vessels that appear to be more seaworthy. As it happens, I shall be moving temporarily to another vessel myself. I begin an attachment on Monday with OnLine, the BBC’s Internet arm, situated in the adjacent office. I’d applied for a permanent position there last July but have had to content myself with a letter from personnel saying they hoped to give me an answer in the autumn. I haven’t written back to ask them which autumn as I don’t think it would be helpful. Meanwhile, I’ll be filling in for a pregnant woman.

One blessing of my schedule is that I have been spared the task of carrying reports on the condition of the Queen Mother following her hip operation. For days we were confronted by royal reporters telling us breathlessly, “live” from the steps of the hospital, who her latest visitor had been. For better or for worse, the old bat remains on the list of 5 royals whose demise brings virtually all other BBC broadcasting to a dead halt as the nation goes into official mourning. (There were 6 until the death of Diana.) We have a large box of obit cassettes & backgrounders at the ready, just in case. What I haven’t escaped has been the turmoil of Zippergate, a circus that defies sensible comment. Maybe Americans have seen the funny side for they’ve just given Clinton his highest poll rating yet! In-between reports on his sex life we’ve been following Madeleine Albright as she tries to convince the world of the desirability of zapping the intransigent Iraqis. Could be a bumpy week!

Thinking of you lots!

Blessings
T