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Well that was a busy weekend. Breakfast with mum on Saturday morning. French things in baskets and jars, new constructions in the garden, and a cat that is still too afraid to go to the loo outside since the fireworks. She peeps out, runs around the garden as though something is after her tail then runs back in to use the litter tray, not having dared pause to crouch while outside.

Picked up the bedding I needed to borrow for dad’s stay then drove straight back home to hoover, dust and tidy the flat. By the time I’d finished two hours later it was sparkly bright. Of course, after dad had been there an hour it was a mess again, but that happens every time he comes to stay so I expect it now.

Anyhow, he arrived late. He stayed with Sal and Dan last night and of course they got delayed on the M25 when bringing him around. Their junction is notorious for hold-ups so I should have factored the extra hour into my cleaning time and got up later. They finally appeared around four and I drove us all to Freeport at an irresponsible speed. The friendly council have opened a nice new road and it’s so smooth you pick up quite a lot of speed before you realise how fast you are going. I was still being overtaken by pretty much everything around us, though - the joys of a 1.4 litre engine. Hmmm…

I ended up buying a new coat. My old one, which I bought back in the days I was doing BBC Three Counties, is now showing its age and after four years of faithful service (worn almost every day) it’s finally being retired.

Drove back at a more reasonable rate, watching the speedo, drank tea watching trash on TV, then out for dinner at New Street Brasserie. Excellent food, and many silly, unpublishable photos taken. Foolish woman on the next table spent the whole of the time she was eating her dessert sitting beneath her open umbrella, then on the way to the look took a lime from a fruit bowl and threw it at Dan. Not entirely sure why.

I should really have driven them straight back home after that, but for some reason we came back and played driving games on the Xbox. That didn’t make 6.30 a pleasant time to be awake this morning. Particularly not as it was raining.

Dad was up already, his mind still working on French time, and was reading magazines on the settee when I came through to make tea. I was going to see if he fancied popping up to LBC with me, but he’d arranged to meet his friend for lunch, so I set off on my own and sat on a wet platform waiting for a delayed train with only Agatha Chistie for company.

Just behind ITN there is a very old manhole cover (personal access chamber cover in politically correct speak) for an electric company I have never heard of - Metesco. Around the edge it has been stamped up as the company’s property, as though anyone would steal it, and in the centre is a great brass plaque of the company logo, worn down over time by countless footsteps.

Took a snap of it on my way into the studios but can find nothing about the company through Google, so I’m assuming it’s long gone.

A fun show. Very varied. Opened with politics, then moved on to comedy with the Fast Show. Charity, then music, then musical political comedy. So, a bit of everything. Left on quite a high, but feeling utterly exhausted having been in there six hours preparing for a single hour-long programme. Found staying awake on the train home very difficult indeed.

Speaking to one of the guests after the show had finished, we got onto the subject of fire fighters. The current threat of strikes over pay, he explained, are all down to the fact that when they went on strike last time around - 25 years ago - they were demanding that their pay be pegged to the highest paid manual workers. At the time that was the dock workers and miners. Well, we all know what happened to the dockers’ and miners’ unions, don’t we, and with them their members’ pay packets.

So, the firefighters have stayed pegged to what was once top-what manual salaries and now, when they’ve not kept up with inflation, they’re after a rise.

I can’t help wondering, though, why if they go on strike the army, which has to replace them, has to use kit that’s 40 years out of date. Surely they can just use the regular fire engines, which all belong to the local councils. Bureaucracy, I’d imagine.

Was home just after four. Dad arrived 20 minutes later, and we settled on watching a film, so I introduced him to Lord of the Rings. (Last time he was here I introduced him to bagels - more than mere coincidence?) It certainly loses something in the translation from cinema screen to DVD and felt far longer than I’d remembered. It also struck me more this time around as being made by a fan for fans. We both kept falling asleep through it, so took a half-hour walk at the half-way point, so in fairness we weren’t watching it under ideal conditions.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 10th, 2002 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Journal, Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.