3February1998

3 February 1998
My dear folks,

I am inspired to respond, briefly, to the welcome arrival of faxes & emails from around the world. Many thanks to those responsible.

The week is rushing past slowly in the way that some weeks do. My cold is going away. I had no sooner mentioned in my last letter that my condition had improved than I was afflicted with sneezes more violent than before. I thought of the man in the bible whose old devils were driven out, only to be replaced by new devils so that his last state was worse than his first. Jones was sympathetic and steadily increased the size of the porridge bowls she prepared for my breakfast until a whole tribe might have fed from the pot. Much as I enjoyed the porridge, it did not get to work on my condition. I did try one night to see if it was possible to expel cold germs with red wine. (You can’t!) This was the night before I began my attachment to News Online so my first day was distinctly rough. I arrived with streaming red piggy eyes, as much from cycling in sub-zero temps as other afflictions – I & drizzled miserably for the rest of the day.

Jones has been busy attending to the needs of her nephew, Bevan, who has moved into a slightly run-down townhouse belonging to absent friends of ours in a very posh part of town. We drove 90 mins down to Balcombe on Sunday to load up the Rocket with Bevan’s possessions & bring them back to town. The car braced itself for the trip back to London, every inch crammed with belongings. Bevan himself had to take the train. To his credit, he’s one of the few people we know whose entire worldly possessions can be divided between the back of the Rocket & a rucksack.

Jones spent Monday doing up his kitchen. On Tuesday she arrived with a carpet cleaner to find that the plumbing had run wild as Bevan tried to take a morning shower which then refused to turn itself off. She was met by a soaking & wild-eyed nephew at the door. Luckily she had the number of a fixer who rushed over to save her (and the carpet cleaner) from gushing pipes & leaking ceilings but not until the townhouse had undergone a thorough soaking. Matters were made worse when the fixer flushed the contents of a (disconnected) loo cistern into a cupboard as part of his repair attempts. The dwelling is due to undergo far-reaching renovations in a few months’ time when the owners return from abroad. Meanwhile, Jones is anxious to keep maintenance costs to a minimum on their behalf.

Online is kinda interesting. I have spent two days getting to grips with the in-house software used for constructing the BBC website. There’s the application used for building up illustrated pages, a huge graphics package, software for capturing live video grabs off air, browsers, the BBC’s Intranet, the old radio & TV news systems, email & about 20 other applications, all lurking on the desktop. The money that’s been lavished on software & equipment is just mind boggling. Every worker sits with a large monitor, a potent computer, & a TV & video recorder clustered around the desk, & there’s lots of workers. All have immediate access to every newswire, audio report & video image that comes into the BBC. These are stored in huge computers as files that can quickly be retrieved & built into stories. The problem is finding them.

On the far side of the room, programmers work constantly to build up the underlying structure as the site grows. Those who dial into the site, if they prefer, can listen to the latest radio news bulletins (in several languages) or watch the TV news or do the interactive stuff - or whatever takes their fancy. It’s serious & ambitious as well as very high tech, clearly the way the BBC believes the industry is moving. It’s fascinating to see how technologies are converging. Clearly, within a few years, only one item of electronic equipment will be required in the household. Whatever you call it, it will combine the family’s computer, radio, television, cassette player, CD player, fax, phone & much else. It will supply programmes on demand. The huge advantage of the technology is that every “hit” on every page is recorded & the Beeb knows the following morning exactly how many people have looked at the site the night before & what pages they’ve been interested in.

That’s enough, I think. I am in danger of running on!
Blessings as ever
T