Day 97 - "Of mousy women and men"

Spanish Practices

Full transcript:

Day 97 Of mousy women and men

Saturday the weather is calm, the sun is shining, I have been doing some extreme weeding on the mountainside and managed to not fall down, the one time I did I thought it was best to relax and just let my body slide to a bit where I could cling on. Our garden in Essex did not have the same extreme challenges, unless you count the incredible numbers of snails that ate their way through most of our English garden.

I have been spending some time reflecting, yesterday about the reasons why we came to Spain, today a reflection of things past. Sometimes it is not healthy to keep reliving the past, much better to look forward to the future.

But often the future is fashioned by the past, all my mental health problems during the 1990s definitely changed me long-term as a person. I am pleased to say now I am a much more ‘mellow’ individual, although I am still capable of falling off my perch as my dear colleague Richard Dallyn used to say.

Over the years we have worked with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, some like us ordinary, some famous, some politicians’ others who might fall into the celebrity status, whatever that now means.

By 1997 I had already become an old lag at LBC and was often pressed into service to train the new young blood coming through the radio station. I remember one such day when I was training a new studio engineer, it was the two Julia’s show, Julia Sommerville the Presenter and Julia the Producer.

Julia the Producer decided that it was a bonus having me in the studio as it meant she could go sit out in the office and catch up on the paperwork that we all had to fill in to comply with the Broadcast regulations of the time.

I agreed and asked what was on the show, she said “A regular guest and some children’s author.” “Fine,” I replied, I was quite happy that there wasn’t anything complicated about the show.

First up I left my charge and went up to collect the regular guest, who was been badged up by the very efficient reception staff at ITN. Down we went to the basement, sorry, lower atrium of the large glass and steel building that is ITN studios. The guy I was training had been good, had engineered a junction into a commercial break and out again with no problems.

Then a call from reception, the next guest had arrived. I left my charge once again to travel those sick making glass lifts of ITN and back to reception for the kiddies author, she was a mousy sort of woman and clearly suffering from nerves. ‘Oh God, I thought, this one will be trouble.’ On the way down I checked her title and that she was the right guest,.. yes it does happen that you can put the wrong guest into the wrong studio.

A seem to remember an occasion when a guest for Geet Mala our Asian show wound up in a discussion about the future of railway transportation in the other studio, he gallantly discussed the advantages of off peak travel until it was discovered he had actually come to talk about a new Indian Restaurant opening in Brixton.

“I want to be called by my initials,” mousy woman piped up. “Oh” I replied. “And what are they dear?” She told me, I thought that is seriously weird, so I put my foot down. “The thing is, that nobody has ever heard of you, this is your first book,” “yes,” she replied. “So, we are going to call you by your proper name, so listeners can relate to you.”

Mousy woman agreed, but it made her shake a little bit more. I took her into the studio and Julia warmly greeted her, she said “My daughter read your book last night and loved it.”

We both had a copy of the book, whilst Mousy lady was telling us all how she was desperate and wrote the book in some café in Glasgow or Edinburgh or somewhere, I took a look at the book. It was your usual fairly dismal children’s book offering. The cover had a train on it with some spotty gormless urchin in glasses in front of it.

I flicked through the pages, it was mostly about magic, not my cup of tea at all. Well the interview was over and the show runner, the poor kid who didn’t get paid but got to enjoy the ‘media experience’, had come back from his break, so I got him to dispatch Mousy Lady upstairs.

I thanked her for coming in, “Oh I see you have a copy of my new book,” she said, “would you like me to sign it for you?”

I answered “no” but I shall look forward to reading it later, she smiled and as the runner led her away I took the book between thumb and forefinger and threw “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling,” into the bin.

So that book became a life-changing book for me. One I realised what a pratt I had been and how rude with it too. This poor woman had come to plug her book that she had worked long and hard to write and I dismissed it, without having the good grace to read the thing. I did years later, and it is a cracking children’s book, every bit as good as the classics, which it has now become.

And two I constantly try to be a kinder person, I don’t always succeed, there is something inside of me that wants to be capricious, arch and downright rude, but I work hard to control it.

Maybe I was always destined to be the hapless journalist that dissed J.K. Rowling as an author, but it did teach me a lesson .. always try to be kind.