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I called Mark and Ja from my delayed train yesterday evening to warn them I was going to be late for dinner. It’s just as well I did. I arrived at theirs at eight (due at half seven), just as the food was coming out of the oven. It was a fab Mediterranean cod thing, the sauce for which came from a jar and Ja tried to convince me, almost successfully, was home made.

We ate and then flopped in front of The Weakest Link until it came to an end. Ja went to bed and Mark and I sat up to talk until far too late. We listened to the bits I’d recorded for Soldiers of Love. I’d not heard them before and they were a bit cringe-inducing. I’m certainly not an actor, but it was fun to hear them. I even have my face on the front cover of the CD. There are twelve of us arranged in a circle of stars, a bit like the European flag. Unfortunately it also looks like we’re all characters out of Blackadder wearing silly Elizabethan ruffs.

That or court jesters.

It was 1am before I got to bed, and then I had to revise my notes for this morning’s breakfast show trail. I was convinced I wouldn’t hear the alarm, so set 11 of them at five minute intervals with the first three going off together.

It worked.

I’d showered and made tea before the call came through. Unfortunately the tea went down the sink the moment I sniffed the milk, but at least the act of making it got my mind working.

It’s still only my second week of doing the trail through an ISDN box rather than on the phone and it’s very strange. It chirps rather than rings, and even before you answer it you can hear what’s going on in the studio through the headphones.

Everything is very clear. I could hear fingers being moved across sheets of paper on the presenter desk.

Anyway, the revision paid off and the trail went well, and at the end of it I left the flat on quite a high, which followed through for the rest of the rainy day.

Gordon popped into PCW on the way to ITN, and we walked through the drizzle to the studios. It was quite nice to get inside by the time we arrived, and we did some pre-records almost straight away. We tried working without the headphones for one interview, just to see what it was like, and both found it very confusing. They went straight back on again the moment we’d finished.

It was good doing the show with Gordon again, though. It felt a bit like the first show back after the two-week Christmas break again and we both had a lot of fun, which I think (hope) comes across well on air.

Arrived home tired and having difficulty deciding whether I should cut my hair.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2002 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.