My dear folks,
It’s nearing the end of a hot, lazy London afternoon, lazy for me & Mave at least. The early evening weather forecasts have showed black clouds boiling up over Iberia into the Bay of Biscay & heading for England. We are to share a little of the thundery rain that has been pelting down over the Quinta for the past few days. (Thank Jones for your fax - & Cathy for yours – ditto Robbie & Lloyd Jones for email updates.) I’ll wander out on to the patio a little later & refresh the flowers. Meanwhile, hello.
I’ve two nights behind me. There was a wicked start to the 1st one when the wires starting flashing 10 mins before my first bulletin - that a verdict had been reached in the Timothy McVeigh trial & would be announced shortly. We “rolled” for 90 mins, desperately short-handed (thanks to cutbacks) & struggling to stay on air as we cut between phone interviews & live feeds from Denver (& Paris for the aftermath of the French elections). “What next?” was the constant refrain from the frazzled director. Thank God for a brilliant presenter who was able to improvise over the pictures coming in live from outside the courthouse & with whom I had an excellent rapport. Time & again I told him to ad lib for 30 seconds while we tried to establish contact with a correspondent being frantically “miked” up at the scene – or just finishing an interview with the domestic BBC News.
It feels like putting on a play with no script & no rehearsals. Curtains drawn & your on! By the time we came off air, I felt utterly wiped out. Then came phone calls from management who wanted to know why “this” or “that” hadn’t happened & why CNN had pictures before we did. My editor, just back from three weeks’ leave in Portugal & equally shattered, explained why between gritted teeth: because they’d fired most of the technical overnight staff & we’d had to go hunting for an engineer & a floor manager. We do sometimes wonder about our leaders! Last night, I was silly enough to take the car to work & spent 30 frustrating minutes crawling along a 3km stretch of freeway. But the rest of the night was gentle & I was deeply grateful for it. Fell into bed this a.m. & realised as I pulled the pillow over my head that I was still wearing my cap.
Of course, for those of you running airlines or mining companies or cement plants, this might sound like light entertainment. We know it’s just TV & frequently remind ourselves of it after cocking it up. But it is also a high tech theatre - satisfying when you get it right & wretched when it goes wrong – leaving egg all over the presenter’s face. Anyhow, that’s history now!
I woke at lunchtime & spent the next hour in the TV chair watching an episode of Colombo, ageing now, but just as watchable as he used to be in Johannesburg more years ago than I care to remember. Then my rounds to the fruit shop & health food shop. I took a positive joy in a quiet amble along sunny pavements, anticipating a long, equally quiet evening. That pile of washing still needs to be ironed. I’ve one more section of expandable diamond-mesh wooden slats to tack to the new patio fence. Mave is sitting expectantly beside the chair, reminding me that supper hasn’t yet been served. I hope the Canadians are happy with the outcome of their election – or, at least, not too unhappy about it. I must drop a line to Mandela & ask him where he gets his shirts. Who else, I ask you, could wander into the OAU conference in Lusaka dressed in a party shirt – and make it look perfectly normal.
Blessings for now
T
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