When I was in hospital a couple of months ago, one of the investigations they did was to stick my head in an MRI scanner to see what, if any, damage the Varicella virus had done. Thankfully they found no trace of anything bad.
But
When they looked at the pictures they saw something unrelated that they thought was worth further investigation. A small artery in my brain is a bit swollen. I have an aneurysm. It’s in the “anterior communicating artery,” a small cross link between two arteries feeding my brain. The staff at Southend Hospital who spotted this sent the scans to a specialist neurosurgery unit at Queen’s Hospital in Romford. They sent back a request for further imaging and the day after I was discharged I went back to Radiology for a “CT Angio”– a CAT scan of my head with a contrast medium to highlight the blood vessels. I didn’t like that much; the contrast medium made me feel a bit queasy, but it soon passed.
I was sent an appointment for a consultation in mid November which I duly attended. I saw two consultants. a Neurosurgeon and an “Interventional Neuroradiologist.” There was also a specialist neurosurgical nurse.
They told me I had an aneurysm. No shit. The artery in question is about 25%-30% larger than it ought to be. This is not good. There is a small but real chance of it rupturing in the next few years with consequences ranging from mildly unpleasant, which could mostly get better, through major permanent disability to, well, let’s not go there. Except that I have to.
There are two options. Well, three, but they made it pretty clear that they don’t recommend “conservative management” which would mean having further scans every six months or a year. Their advice was that this was only kicking the can down the road and that sooner or later I’d be faced with the same choices.
Which are: Craniotomy. They remove a small section of my skull, poke around in the grey stuff, and isolate the offending bulge with small clips. Replace the bone and in time it will heal and no one would ever know it had been done. It’s the “definitive solution” but traumatic, painful and with a longish convalescence.
Or, Endoscopy. A small cut in an artery in my groin and they navigate a probe through the blood vessels until they get to the bulge and reinforce it from the inside with a stent. Quick,; in and out of hospital in two days and short recovery. There’s a small (about 1 in 30) chance of it not “taking” and having to be done again. They’ll do scans every now and then to keep an eye on it. The main drawback is that I’ll have to take anticoagulant medication for the rest of my life to prevent blood clotting around the insert. It’ll be a small annoyance for the first six months on quite a strong blood thinner but after that it’s aspirin forever which is fairly benign. They pointed out that a very large number of over 70s take anticoagulant medication without any problems.
I was rather taken aback. Going in I’d kind of assumed that they’d tell me what was wrong and explain what they wanted to do about it. I wasn’t expecting a choice. They said they understood they’d given me a lot of information to absorb and they didn’t expect me to make a decision on the spot. I’d be sent comprehensive notes and contact details for the nurse so I could ask questions. They would be happy to have another in person consultation as well.
Walking out of the consultation in a partial daze I was pretty sure I wanted the endoscopic procedure. Something about having the top of my head sliced off really didn’t appeal.
Then Karen and I stopped to decompress in the hospital coffee shop and by the time I’d settled a bit was leaning towards a craniotomy. “Once and done” and no annoying drug regime.
It was a bit of a wait for the notes but they eventually showed up and I formulated a bunch of questions for the nurse. She sent back a comprehensive set of replies and I spent the Christmas holidays pondering the options.
I went back and forth and round and round and early in January I emailed them asking for the endoscopic procedure. I just couldn’t get past the image, inaccurate as it may be, of slicing the top off a boiled egg.
So then they sent me a couple more appointments. One was supposed to be a phone call but for reasons never explained that didn’t happen, and a couple of days later, an in person appointment in Romford. That was my pre-surgical assessment. Blood pressure, height, weight,etc. A longish medical history questionnaire and then they took some blood,–quite a lot of blood–some skin swabs just in case I was harbouring MRSA and an ECG. I got a short list of instructions on fasting for the day of the surgery, and that was it for the time being. I now had to wait.
I waited quite a long time. Well, I thought it was quite a long time. I had no real idea of how long I could expect to wait. I had a slight memory of the surgeons saying back in November that it wouldn’t be long. Maybe a few weeks. But it got to five weeks and I was starting to wonder.
Then the phone rang one lunchtime: “private number.” Normally I don’t take these but I had a feeling…
It was the hospital. They’d had a cancellation and there was a slot available in two days. Friday 28th.
Did I want it?
Yes, I rather thought I did. A bit short notice but let’s get it over and done with
OK, I was to present myself at the day surgery unit at 7:30 that morning. I should expect to be there for one night, maybe more but at least one night.
That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it? Well, judge for yourselves
It probably started on Sunday 6th October. I’d been on a long (65 km) , organised bike ride starting and finishing in Ware, in Hertfordshire. It went well. I was a bit pleased with myself because I actually finished, unlike the previous year when I’d basically given up after about 15 km and found a shortcut back to the start.
Sitting at the designated rest stop half way round I noticed a slightly odd feeling on the right side of my head. It wasn’t quite bad enough to be called a headache but it was something off. I dismissed it as one of those transient things that would go away in its own time.
I kept noticing it as I was driving home afterwards and through the evening.. So that night I took a couple of ibuprofen before bed.
Next morning it was still there. So then I started to come up with possible reasons for it, each of which would naturally mean it would go away of its own accord. I’d had a tooth out a week earlier and I’d been taking a codeine based painkiller. Was it a withdrawal symptom? The internet seemed to think that codeine could provoke withdrawal headaches.
The other thing was also related to the extraction. I reasoned that I’d had to brace my head against the force of the dentist pulling on his forceps and might have strained my neck muscles. Which of course had been masked by the codeine.
But instead of fading, which it would have done if it was either of those it got slowly worse, and by Friday I realised that I was taking too much ibuprofen for too little effect and managed to book myself a slot at the doctors.
I saw a nurse practitioner rather than a GP but I can’t fault her approach. She took my history and checked me over for signs of a minor stroke (which was a rational and plausible possibility.) That seemed OK so she considered the next step. Either she could book me in for blood tests on the Monday or we could try to get me into “SDEC” — Same Day Emergency Clinic–at the hospital for a CT scan of my head. I was all for cracking on. She cleared it with her supervising GP and printed off a letter of introduction to take to A&E, because she couldn’t get through to the SDEC “Gatekeeper” (She admitted they rarely can)
So Karen drove me up to A& E. It could have been worse but it wasn’t fun. It was full, but not horribly overcrowded. It took about half an hour from walking through the door to sitting down in front of the triage nurse, who was less than pleased at the attempt to game the system. But he passed me through anyway. I couldn’t have cared less. I was in.
Wasn’t too much of a wait before someone came with a wheelchair (in general inpatients aren’t allowed to roam unsupervised) and off we all went to SDEC. They took my history, did some quick observations and told me what was going to happen. First was blood tests , then a CT scan of my head, then, something that no one had mentioned before, a lumbar puncture to extract some cerebrospinal fluid for testing.
The LP was a touch traumatic. First I had to sign a consent that detailed (as consent forms tend to do) all manner of horrific but unlikely problems. Then I had to bend over while the doctor shoved a large needle between two of my vertebrae and shoogled it about, MILLIMETRES FROM MY BLOODY SPINAL CORD. Well they managed to extract a few bottles of fluid without paralysing me (Although the tingle that went down my right leg was a bit unexpected) and sent them off for testing. One of them, I discovered went to a specialist unit in Coventry. This will be important later.
It was a bit of a wait, but then we got the results. The CT scan showed no head trauma. The blood tests were average and the CS fluid was mostly normal, in particular there was no trace of blood, which along with the clear CT scan confirmed that I hadn’t had any kind of head trauma. But it did show an elevated white cell count, indicating some kind of infection in the lining of the brain. I was invited to return on the Monday morning to discuss treatment options. But I was told to come back immediately if the symptoms got much worse. In the discharge letter I saw later that was called “Safetynetting.”
We went home.
Sunday morning I woke up and for a short period thought I couldn’t see out of my right eye. Then I realised that although I couldn’t make out much detail I could see the power LEDs of various bits of kit scattered around the room. I wasn’t , thankfully, blind in that eye but it was badly blurred, far more than it usually is with my myopia. I figured that excessively blurred vision counted as worsening, so back to SDEC we went.
They booked me in to see an ophthalmologist that afternoon. He had a good look and told me I had Uveitis, an inflammation of the lining of the eyeball, which can lead to headaches that present as near they eye but not actually IN it. He gave me steroid eye drops and a treatment schedule that extends into December, after which I am to see my usual optician.
Back in SDEC, I think they made an understandable but unfortunate mistake. They decided that Uveitis explained everything and sent me home as MFD. Medically Fit for Discharge, cancelling my Monday appointment. And things did, briefly, seem to improve through Sunday and Monday.
The shit hit the fan on Wednesday. Karen took a call from the doctor who’d seen me in SDEC. (he couldn’t reach me on my phone) Further analysis of my CS fluid, the bottle that I mentioned had gone to Coventry, had revealed the presence of Varicella Zoster Virus. VZV. It’s a member of the Herpes family and is responsible for chickenpox and shingles. I’ve had chickenpox but I seemed to be wide open to shingles, and here it was in my head. It was now certain that I had viral meningitis. I had to go straight back back into SCED with an overnight bag.
Overnight. Right.
After booking me in, the very first thing they did was punch a hole in my right arm and insert a cannula, which I would have for the next six days, Then they ran in a bag of saline with a shot of Acyclovir, a common antiviral agent known to be effective against Herpes family viruses.
They kept me in for the first night in a single room in the short term admissions ward, but very late on the next day I was moved to a 6 bed unit in general medical. I arrived at about midnight and I should probably apologise for the noise I made blundering about in the half dark trying to get myself ready for bed.
I’d had four bags of Acyclovir on Thursday and then three bags every subsequent day. 6am, 1pm and around 8pm The 8pm could be annoying because while they were very good at remembering to put them up, they sometimes forgot to check whether they were done and it would get to bedtime with me still hooked up. Charitably, they were overworked.
When they hooked my up to the first drip, they gave me a rundown of the possible future progression of my treatment. They needed to see just how bad the infection had got and how firmly it had me in its grip. If it hadn’t really taken hold, then I could get a few bags of IV Acyclovir and go home with a box of pills. Oral Acyclovir. The way to do that was to have a better look inside my head. That meant an MRI scan of my brain which they hoped to schedule for Thursday.
Well I asked a couple of times but it didn’t happen until Friday, which had a slight knock on effect.
On Friday morning I spoke to another doctor, the consultant in charge of the ward and she clarified that I’d have the MRI scan, which would be reviewed by the “Infectious diseases specialist” (who I never saw) and it was their decision whether I could be discharged with oral Acyclovir. The problem was that the infectious diseases specialist didn’t work weekends so I was there until at least Monday. Oh well. But I did at least get the scan on Friday morning.
The weekend passed off uneventfully. Three bags of Acyclovir a day. I was starting to feel a bit better. The previous Thursday the headache had been really awful but it was now fading into the background. I started to get into the rhythm of the ward. Breakfast at 7, morning meds round, drip at 8, lunch at 12, drip at 1, coffee and biscuits at 3, tea at 5, drip at 8, evening meds round and bed. And at regular intervals someone would come round with a trolley and take my blood pressure. In amongst all that I had to organise going to the bathroom to do my eye drops. Six times a day. Karen came in every evening to bring me good cheer and fresh T shirts and underwear. One blessing was that I didn’t have to wear one of those undignified hospital gowns that open at the back. And I had my phone and tablet to keep me occupied. I could even, by using my phone as a hotspot, stream various TV shows. The phone signal was good on the 4th floor. (They discourage streaming on the hospital WiFi network) On Saturday a doctor told me the MRI showed me clear of any long term damage but the decision to discharge me or not was still in the hands of the infectious diseases specialist on Monday
Monday morning I had a drip bag and then a blood test. I was assuming I would be ejected after lunch
No.
Just after lunch a nurse came and started me on a giant bag of pure saline that she said would be up for eight hours. So I wasn’t going home. Something to do with my kidneys.
Later, a doctor came and explained. It’s a known and quite common side effect of IV Acyclovir that the kidneys can get slightly clogged with its metabolites. It might have been better if I’d drunk more water, but no one said. That’s what the saline was for, to help flush the muck through. They gave me another bag overnight and said that should fix it. I’d have another blood test in the morning and depending on the result, I could possibly go home in the afternoon.
And to cut a long story short, that’s what happened. The first I knew about it was when a nurse came after lunch and took out the cannula. Then they gave me an envelope of paperwork and enough oral Acyclovir for three more days and waved goodbye. I called up Karen for a lift and that was it.
It’s been nearly a month now and while I’m feeling much, much better than I did, there seems to be quite a long tail. I still get, not exactly headaches, but a feeling of a bit of a stiff neck. And I think there’s a little bit of a reaction to the steroid eye drops I’m still taking and will for a couple of weeks yet. It’s a bit two steps forward, one step back. Subjectively it seems to correlate roughly with with tiredness and stress.
And that I think is the main reservation about the treatment. They staff at the hospital were focused on getting me well enough to push me out of the door and free up the bed. Which is understandable I suppose; no bed in my unit was ever free for more than a couple of hours. But maybe someone could have sat me down for ten minutes and told me what to expect going forward.
So. Was that a “brush with death”? What would have happened if if I’d just carried on swallowing ibuprofen? One possibility is that my own immune system might have dealt with the infection eventually, just like it does with other viruses. But at what cost? The first doctor I saw was slightly concerned that I could have scarring of the lining of the brain. That sounds scary.
Or maybe I’d have developed other symptoms that couldn’t be ignored until it was too late. But that all happens in the other leg of the Trousers of Time. In this leg, I seem to be virus free–or the virus is dormant. As I understand it Herpes family viruses never really go away. They just shut down. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know why it suddenly woke up. It’s a slight worry that it could happen again. It may be worth investigating the shingles vaccine.
There’s a coda.
The day before I was discharged I started to notice a slight soreness in my right elbow. Obviously I ignored it. My best guess was that it was caused by holding my largish tablet up so I tried to stop doing it.
It wasn’t that. After a couple more days I couldn’t ignore it any more and got someone at the GP surgery to look at it (again, not a doctor; a paramedic practitioner) One look and he diagnosed “infective bursitis”. Antibiotics and ibuprofen gel. He thought it was rather likely that it an infectious agent had tunnelled in through the site of the cannula and worked its way round but that’s something else I suppose we’ll never know for sure. I did find out later that cannulas aren’t really supposed to be left in place for six days. They should be removed after four or so days and a new one put in somewhere else. Anyway the elbow cleared up in a few days.
And there we are. I’m starting to feel better; I’m reintroducing myself, slowly, to the bike and I’m enjoying it. I think I’m going to be OK.
I’ve had this photo hanging around for quite some time. If I’ve ever scanned it before I’ve lost track. Anyway, it showed up the other day and I scanned it again.
It’s the family portrait at my parents’ wedding. It was Saturday 20th November, 1948 at St Mary Magdalen, East Ham.
Wedding of James E. Gillett and Hilda B. Clare. Sat 20th November 1948
Almost everyone in both immediate families is there. Obviously in the centre we see my father, James Edward with his new wife, and my future mother, Hilda Beatrice Clare. On the left as you look are most of the Gillett side, including three of his brothers and his sister.
On the far left, I think, is father’s eldest brother, William. “Uncle Bill” to me. His full name was William Walter Thomas, something I only discovered when I started to root out all the birth, marriage and death certificates. I find it mildly amusing for reasons we’ll come to.
Next to him, the young lad would be his only son, also William. In this case William Arthur. My cousin “Little Bill.” He’s about 12 years old here, having been born in 1936.
Next, and behind Little Bill is my aunt Joyce: Joyce Evelyn Gillett, the baby of the Gillett family and the only woman. 20 years old here.
The slightly older woman next to Joyce is someone I’m not sure about. Probably she’s the wife of one of the brothers but I’ve got no way of knowing which one she might be. If I had to guess I’d lean towards her being Katharine née Russell, uncle Wally’s wife. Bill’s marriage to his wife (and Little Bill’s mother) Marjorie is known to have been a bit, well, rushed (As is possible to see from Little Bill’s rather early arrival, which is another story) and may well not have lasted.
My grandmother is next in line: Agnes Clara née Ryan. Her husband, my grandfather William Alfred Gillett isn’t in this picture. Records show he died in a hospital in Leyton, east London in May the next year so I’m assuming he was too ill to attend the wedding.
Completing the Gillett side we have, probably, my uncles Wally, (Walter Arthur) and Tommy (Thomas Albert) You see, perhaps, why I’m slightly amused. I had an uncle William Walter Thomas, and an uncle Walter, and an uncle Thomas. Seems weird to me.
Missing from this line up is my last uncle John Alfred Gillett. I think I’ve been given a reason for his absence but just now I can’t remember.
You might have noticed that there are three generations of Williams mentioned there. (Karen delights in calling them all the “Willie Gillies”) It wasn’t uncommon in the past for an eldest son to be named for the father. And in fact it goes back further than that. Grandfather William was the eldest son of a William Gillett CRANNAGE (the circumstances of the name change are not clear) and HIS father was supposedly also a William. I say supposedly because while he was named as the father on the birth certificate there’s no evidence he ever had anything to do with his son and could well have just been a name plucked out at random to go on the paperwork. Still, he gave his name. Young Bill, though, broke with tradition and when he married and had a son fifteen years later he named him Andrew.
Getting back to the photo. Behind and to the left of my mother is her brother Arthur Edward Clare (Uncle Ted to me) and next to him at the back, her youngest brother Ron: Ronald George. In the front again we have the father and mother of the bride: Arthur George Clare and Rhoda Jane née Bailey. Arthur was Rhoda’s second husband and the father of Hilda, Ted and Ron. Her previous husband, Henry Simmons had died in 1919 in the Spanish ‘flu epidemic leaving her with the final three siblings we see here. Rhoda Florence, known as Floss, William George and finally Henry John “Jack” Simmons.
The wedding took place during a gap in James’ Merchant Navy service. He’d signed on as a carpenter’s mate with the MV Arawa of New Zealand in 1942. He then spent most of WW II also as a carpenter’s mate on MV Rangitiki before transferring to MV Pipiriki. He was paid off from her in May 1948 and came home. I don’t know what he did with himself, apart from getting married, for the next six months, but three weeks after the wedding he signed on with MV Hertford as ship’s carpenter for what looks to have been her maiden voyage. I have no details of where they went, but they were away for six months. He then did one more voyage lasting until December 1949 before leaving the sea for good.
In 2006 I spent a rather enjoyable five weeks touring Germany following the England footy team in their latest attempt to win a World Cup. For three weeks we followed their progress through the group stages and two knockout games until the inevitable disappointment of losing to Portugal on penalties in Gelsenkirchen. After that I decamped to Berlin and spent the rest of the tournament on a fixed camera overlooking the Brandenburg Gate.
Like I said, I rather enjoyed it, so when we got home I started dropping some fairly unsubtle hints in certain quarters that I could be available for the 2008 European Championships due to take place in Austria and Switzerland.
First, though, England had to qualify. Much as it might annoy fans of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it’s probably true that BBC National News only does the full saturation coverage of these things when England are involved. So I was keeping a beady eye on the qualification campaign.
It did not go well. It seemed to start reasonably with a 5-0 thrashing of Andorra but then they started making hard work of it and by the end of the campaign it came down to one game against Croatia at Wembley in November 2007.
As I recall, assuming Russia were going to beat Andorra that evening, at least a draw was necessary to qualify. Seeing as it was a pivotal moment, News decided to send a team to Wembley to watch over it. Funnily enough, most of us on that job were hoping to get the trip the following year, including me.
My position was on a pitchside camera with sports correspondent James Pearce. I’d worked with James before, at the 2004 Euros in Lisbon and we got on pretty well. We weren’t allowed out there during the game but we did a lot of preview stuff beforehand and made ready to go out as soon as it was over.
Without dragging it out too much, England blew it. 0-2 down at half time and looking out of it. They dragged themselves back into contention and with a quarter of an hour to go it was 2-2, which would have been just good enough even with Russia beating Andorra. Then they conceded a third and couldn’t manage just one last goal. Disappointment all round. England, and by extension, many of us, weren’t going to the Euros.
That, you may recall was when photos of manager Steve Mclaren sheltering under an umbrella appeared with the caption “The wally with the brolly” A little unfair I thought, because it really was horribly cold and wet, as you will see.
Wally with Brolly
The other thing that happened that night was that the BBC’s rolling news channel News 24 sent a camera team to shoot material for the countdown sequence they used as an introduction at the top of the hour. This is what they got.
My brush with fame.
This short, blink and you miss it, clip from that night, taken as the team were warming up, appeared in most of the headline countdown sequences on News 24 for many years. Like I said, it was cold and wet which is why I’m muffled up in the bright red jacket.
There is another clip they sometimes used showing James and me interviewing Alan Hansen. If I can track that down I’ll add it here later. This one came from a ten minute compendium of a number of versions of the sequence at YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghlgMKYoL2U
So we didn’t get to go to the Euros. Not a major tragedy in the history of the world and, as it happened, two years later most of us got the opportunity to go to the World Cup in South Africa so that was nice.
I don’t remember exactly when, my best guess in sometime in the late ’70s or early ’80s, but I once saw in the New Year in a pub with my parents and a few uncles and aunts. The events of the evening are largely forgotten–I don’t even recall which pub–except for one thing.
As the year changed, the landlord used the closing time bell, a replica ship’s bell, to ring out eight bells, the end of the watch.
All of a sudden, my father shouted across the bar, “Sixteen bells! Sixteen!”
Apparently it’s a seafarer’s tradition to ring out the old year with eight bells and ring in the new one with eight more and as an old merchant seaman my dad wanted to see it (and hear it) done properly.
I forgot about this for a long time, until maybe nine or ten years ago I spotted this on the mantlepiece at Karen’s
It’s a small bell, and as soon as I saw it, the memory came back. The next New Year’s Eve I took it outside and as midnight passed, I rang sixteen bells on it in memory of my father, who had only died a couple of years previously.
I thought it was a bit quiet, not surprising for its size, so a couple of years later I got hold of something a bit bigger.
This one makes a ding I can actually just about hear. And every New Year since 2014 into 2015 we’ve gone out to the front of the house at midnight and I ring sixteen bells on it Two sets of four double strokes.
1,2-1,2-1,2-1,2—1,2-1,2-1,2-1,2
Eight bells for the old year and eight for the new.
From 1st January 2015.
I still find the bell a bit quiet. To my ageing ears it sounds with a click rather than a clang, so sometime before the next time I’m going to get hold of a proper ship’s bell: four or preferably six inches across. That will tell the entire street it’s the New Year.
Happy New Year to you all. May it be a better one than the last one.
At the funeral of my Auntie June ( neé Tidd) a few months ago her sons, Gary and Jamie, produced a couple of albums of old photos. Mostly they date from the early 1950s. I took charge of one of them and I’ve been slowly scanning the pictures for posterity. Not surprisingly, they mostly feature June, her husband Ron Clare (who passed in 2002) and their friends. Usually on holiday.
But there’s one that sets itself apart. It’s Ron and June with his parents (my grandparents) and ALL the siblings and spouses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them all together before. The scribbled note on the back says it was taken in 1953 or ’54. I suspect it was at their house in Hatherly Gardens in East Ham.
All the family
Front and centre: my maternal grandmother, Rhoda Jane Clare (neé Bailey) Born in London in 1891 and worked as a domestic servant. In 1912 she married a Henry George Simmons and had three children. Henry John known as Jack (1913) Back row, second left. Rhoda Florence–Floss–(1916) Back row, centre and William George, (1918) Front row on the right as you view it.
In 1919, Henry George was carried off by the Spanish ‘flu epidemic. Must have been hard for Nanny Rhoda, but luckily an old friend of Henry’s, Arthur George Clare, seen next to Rhoda on the left, stepped in to help and in May 1922 they married. In December that year, my mother, Hilda Beatrice Clare, far left, was born. Think about that. Take all the time you need.
Later on, they had Arthur Edward (1925) back row, second right, and Ronald George (1931) on the right at the back. Completing the family group we have my dad, Hilda’s husband, James Edward directly behind her, half hidden, and June Iris Tidd, Ron’s wife, in front of him on the right.
I’m absolutely fascinated by this picture. As I said, I’ve never seen all of them together before, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of grandfather Arthur at all. And as he died in 1959, I really remember very little about him.
They’re all gone now, as you might imagine. June was the last living member of her generation of the family. But we do have these and many other photos, and I hope they keep on emerging.
Well over thirty five years ago, in the run up to Christmas 1986 or ’87, I think, the BBC got an invitation to see a Santa waterskiing on the Thames under one of the bridges. I imagine it was some kind of publicity stunt, but for what I have absolutely no idea any more. And Christmas being (in those days) a quiet time of year for news, they decided to cover it.
Off we went, cameraman Albie Charlton and I, to capture this rather trivial event for posterity.
We set up somewhere on the South Bank, and sure enough, there came a speedboat towing Santa under the bridge. Not Earth shatteringly important but maybe mildly diverting.
Problem was, the organisers of this stunt hasn’t bothered to coordinate with the Met Police’s Thames division, who soon showed up in their blue boat with their blue lights and nicked Santa and the pilot for some obscure breach of the rules of the river, hauling them into their boat and zooming off with them.
We thought this was quite amusing, and so did the editor of the lunchtime news who put it out as an “and finally.” (The BBC didn’t actually call it that, but you know, last trivial item before the weather.)
What nobody realised was that on a quiet day that close to Christmas, LOADS of small kiddies would be watching, and so, no sooner did the item finish than the switchboard lit up like, well, like a Christmas tree with outraged parents yelling that their kids were horrified and demanding to know if their presents would still arrive.
I believe they had to run a line in the early evening news that Santa had been released without charge and would be operating as normal.
I do wish I had evidence, but I didn’t take any stills at the time (one of the regrets of my career) and a search has turned up no sign of the video. If anyone has or finds anything, do tell.
It’s one of those times when I seriously regret not taking many photos of my working life.
21st October is Trafalgar Day, the anniversary of the major sea battle when Admirals Nelson and Collingwood engaged and destroyed a combined French and Spanish fleet under Adm. Pierre Villeneuve.
In 2005, because it was an anniversary with noughts on the end, the Navy had a bit of a do in Portsmouth, centred, obviously, around HMS *Victory* and the BBC, including me, went down there to cover it. Sad to say I wasn’t part of the team that got to go on board. I was running the live camera on the press gantry overlooking the ship, doing correspondents in vision for News 24 (as it was still then called) and the bulletins. Even though I wasn’t on the ship I enjoyed it well enough.
The advance briefing we got from the Navy told us that as part of the commemorations *Victory* would “fire her broadside” for the first time in nearly 200 years. Given that she mounted around a hundred guns we thought that would be quite spectacular and rather looked forward to it, even the fifty or so on one side would be impressive enough.We set up and waited. With seconds to go I was framed up and running; I suppose a dozen others were as well.
And…
“Pop, pop, pop, pop…..”A handful of small firecrackers went off in some of her gun ports. That was it. In retrospect I suppose it wasn’t very likely that they’d run out a row of 32 pounders and let them off (even with a tiny gunpowder charge and no shot) but it was kind of an anticlimax.
The builders showed up bright and early. We thought they’d take their time, scope it out, make plans, but nope. Straight in. They ripped out the doors and cut them into bite sized chunks. for disposal. They kitted up in onesies and masks to take down the asbestos roofs
then just destroyed the pre-cast concrete walls.
By the time it came on to raain at 3 they’d pretty much cleared the site.
Well, the Squirrel Bloke came back yesterday, had a look in the loft and…
…nothing. No squirrels in the traps, no evidence that they’ve been even sniffing around. He suspects that all the unaccustomed activity up there has driven them away.
Fine by us. Either way they’re gone. He said he’ll come back in a week or so and check again and if there’s still no evidence of residency he’ll set to blocking up the access. Be interesting to see how he does that. When I had squiggles at my old Acton place I tried nailing fine mesh wire under the eaves but it wasn’t terribly satisfactory.
