Easter workers!

BBC Broadcasting House in Llandaff was a ghost building this morning with only what appeared to be a skeleton staff enjoying triple time. A rate not enjoyed, I might add, by the contributors to the programme!

The security guard was engaged in a conversation which appeared to be a monologue from a deranged person maintaining that he had been poisoned. Such is the lot of the front of house in broadcasting!

The news room was deserted, apart from Patrick ploughing his way through the verbiage of the Sunday papers. After both of us signally failing to make the thermos devices containing boiling water and coffee work, I started to work my way through the rejects already viewed by Patrick.

‘Wales on Sunday’ yet again took the accolade as the most fatuous of the Sunday papers and you have to bear in mind that it was competing against such heavyweight opposition as ‘The News of the World’; ‘The Sunday Express’; ‘The Sunday People’; ‘The Sunday Mirror’ and ‘The Mail on Sunday’. So a considerable achievement!

I was reminded of Jimmy Porter in ‘Look Back in Anger’ who asked the question, “Do the Sunday papers make you feel ignorant?” Those were the days! Even the so-called ‘quality press’ can sometimes tyrannize by trivia – and that’s after you’ve weeded out the supplements and extras that you have not intention of reading.

The programme went well, especially as we discovered a small (but perfectly formed) cream egg in front of each microphone! Now that’s what I call attention to detail.

The drive back to Rumney was made a little more exciting by the read out on the information panel on the hired Zafira telling me how few miles were left in the tank. It is unnerving to have a precise number of miles indicated together with the inexplicable word ‘Range’ flanked by six exclamation marks and a petrol pump icon flashing ominously – as well as the ordinary petrol tank indication needle reading empty. ‘Twas almost as if the car was trying to tell me something.

I worked out that I might just have enough petrol to get to a petrol station on the Newport Road if the Tesco in Pengam was closed. At a push!

Luckily disaster was averted by the garage being open, though there was a bad moment when the petrol pump that I chose refused to give me any petrol.

Lunch was provided by Toni’s mum and was Paella and Fideuá and we were able to utilize a good old Cardiff tradition and have ‘arf and ‘arf with generous portions of both washed down by an excellent Cava. If only the Catalan meal were taking place in Catalonia!

I live in faith and will put my trust in the opening of the traditionally intensive house buying and selling period which opens with the Easter Bank Holiday and stretches until the summer.

The CRB should be completed soon and I will have to think more seriously about what that will allow me to do. But before that there is an interview with the Job Centre people and a ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ meal.

It’s a hard old life!