Apparently three days of lying flat (Tues 13, and on)
reduced the inflammation in my back where I have damaged ligaments. So thank you for your acknowledgements and kindness. I can now sit up to half an hour– rigged with support – “but don’t push it …” Not a chance, miss.
I won’t bore you with a list of what I read – just to say – that if you are a reader, it matters. Didn’t miss watching television: nothing to watch – which is beginning to include the structure of the so called national news, which takes a story and beats it to schnitzel,
over and over.
While the loss of life on the yacht Bayesian would be under any circumstances regrettable, the endless emphasis on its status as super yacht, as on those lost as moneyed, moneyed and again moneyed got right up my nose. Is there some inference here that the more you pay, the safer you are ? Because nobody wins against the sea. That’s why the RNLI is so important.
Change is fine when it happens over there – before it affects you or after you have gone – but living through change (upheaval, even) is a different beast. I have never before recoiled from watching BBC News. It is repetitious, I don’t like the format. And there isn’t much else.
The BBC4 reruns of Parkinson included Billy Connolly,
Rod Hull and the Emu, and me. No I didn’t watch, but two of my oldest friends did and sent me once in a lifetime letters. And Hamish Clark wrote to tell me that I had understood Connolly’s humour better than any foreigner he had ever seen – a big compliment from a Scot. And I recalled my last meeting with Parky at Waitrose in Kings Road, recognising him from the side. It’s not a nose you could forget, and purest Yorkshire.
We walked slowly towards the exit and caught up till outside on the pavement, we faced each other. He asked if I was still working (he was ten years older than me). I said no. “That’s a shame” he said. And I asked “Why, Michael ?” “Because” he told me “ you were good at what you did, radio and tv – and that’s rare.” I thanked him and we shook hands. A gent and a total pro.
Last week too Phil Donahue died, a journalist of wide experience and competence who understood that housewives weren’t all stupid, just because they were home in the afternoon all over America, and built a massively successful “You talk about …” type show of which Oprah said “No Donahue, no Winfrey.”
He recorded five shows over here to one of which I was party. Walking along to my place, I heard a building buzz just like a swarm and grabbed an assistant , asking “What is that ?” He took me to a place where I could see the audience and I watched Donohue warm them up – shaking hands, introducing himself, introducing them to each other, joshing and teasing and being warm and pleasant, moving all through the people of whom he said “they are the show.”. He clearly believed it. It was inspirational. .
And Nell McCafferty died,
a fine Irish journalist, feminist and lesbian at a time when it was a fight to put those three things in one sentence in Ireland. For International Women’s Day that year, the evening began with Mary Anderson talking about being gay in Ireland, and Nell, not wanting her to feel isolated, stood up, affirming “And I’m Nell McCafferty from the Irish Times and I’m a lesbian too !” To be joined by the much respected Sister Benvenuto who had done terrific work with the homeless in Dublin, leaping to her feet with “And I’m a nun !” It remains in my mind one of the most racketty and good humoured television occasions, we all talked and laughed and I never got a word in edgeways, very good for me.
I don’t like the term “passing” for death. Passing and failing was the language of exams – and my parents didn’t approve of that, either. So of death, I usually say “Gone to glory” . That’s some of what I thought of, lying there.
Annalog 