I’ve been subscribing to the Radio Times for many years and bought it for even more many years before that. I took up an offer at a Cheltenham Literary Festival many years ago to get it delivered every week. I found that a very exciting event. I would rip off the plastic cover , carefully consign that to the bin ( so as not to risk the wrath of the recycling people who have refused to collect for far less a misdemeanor than that ) take out the various advertising leaflets that come and put those with the stuff to be recycled… I am not a great devotee of re-cycling, but I do play along with it as my wife is. I mean re-cycling hasn’t saved the planet from the Big V, has it? So, I rest my case.
Once the RT is free from all extraneous packaging I put it lovingly on the little coffee table I salvaged when all the old furniture went along with my lovely comfy armchair and turn to the highlights of the following week. Now, I have to say ( and I assume everybody has noticed this as it isn’t rocket science) that new programmes to watch are getting thinner and thinner on the ground. I get that. They aren’t making them, although the good news is that they are resuming new episodes of The Archers next week. Wonder if Ambridge will still be free of The Big V and the place to go.
Whenever the characters in The Archers got outside you can hear birdsong. Yesterday, I had a zoom meeting with my sports management company’s partners in Los Angeles, Bueunos Aires, Glasgow, Madrid and Southampton. My Portugese partner, Pedro, was sprawled in a deck-chair by his swimming pool and you could see the blue sky and hear all the birds. I am becoming obsessed with birds ever since I began bird spotting in my back garden. Now, what, I hear you ask has any of this got to do with the Radio Times? Come on, boys and girls, you know me well enough by now to doubt even for a second that I am not going somewhere with all of this.
So, here is the denouement, the big reveal as I know you were either holding your breath or thinking should I even bother to read any further because this could prove to be fifteen minutes of my life I will never get back again? The front cover of the RT for the week of 23-29 May 2020 shows a photo of somebody called Chris Packham and says it contains his “Guide to Garden Birds “ It tells me to “ grab my binoculars, “ or “ bins “ as I am reliable informed the Twitchers call them. Could be a bit confusing that, when it’s refuse collection day and you tell your other half to put out the bins and she throws away your very expensive bit of bird-watching equipment.
So, in eager anticipation, I turn to Page 10 and there are pretty pictures of a Swallow, a Cuckoo, a Blue Tit ( today’s joke by 7-year-old Sonny was “ What happens when you put a bear in a fridge… a Teddy Brrrrrr “ so maybe the Tit had been in the fridge as well to turn it blue with cold ) a Robin. a Sparrowhawk, a Wren, a House Sparrow ( what’s that doing in the garden then ? Stupid name ) a Goldfinch, a Chaffinch, a Tawny Owl , a Swift, a Song Thrush… at which point I eagerly turned the page and found an article about Prince William and Mental Health.
I was very puzzled. Had somebody torn a page out, was there a problem in the lay-out of the magazine? Because, nowhere, but nowhere, was there a mention of the only bird I have so far spotted in my garden…. the pigeon. Not good enough for you, Chris? Not exotic enough? Got a grudge about them because your Mummy refused to spring for 50p to buy you a bag of seed to feed them with in Trafalgar Square? I am urged in the article to watch his “Springwatch “ programme, but I am making it absolutely clear that if there are no pigeons in the first episode then I am done with it and will focus on the pair procreating on my garden fence. That’s what I call bird-watching.
They are talking about 14 days quarantine for air-travellers. Does that apply to all these namby-pamby foreign birds? At least our domestic pigeons present no such problems. I don’t think they fly south for the winter, do they? So that got me thinking about jet-lag. Not a bad link, methinks. Ok, so all my long haul holidays are on hold, but so is jet-lag. No waking up at 2am in LA or New York or Sydney or Beunos Aires ( just showing off now ) and wondering if I can get back to sleep, but knowing I can’t. Then wandering around in a daze for the next few days of the holiday with a totally irregular sleep pattern which can last up to a week, by which time I am thinking about going home and desperately trying to gear myself up for UK time. And then getting home and finding I have…. jet-lag and can’t get to sleep for another week … or month… by which time I feel I need another holiday,
Foreign travel, though remains on ice for a while. I seem to be amassing Time Share weeks in much the same way as I am piling up theatre credits ( I think I now have enough credit at The National Theatre to buy the place…. And as my wife often says, the whole of the South Bank needs pulling down and starting again… so maybe that’s the use to which I can put my credits) To be honest it can be a very threatening place late at night as you walk back to the car park or to Waterloo Station or across the bridge.
So, I have two time shares. One up in Scotland at Cameron House that we bought more than thirty years ago. The drive up there gets longer and longer and after a disastrous fire a few years ago the facilities ain’t great. And then there is the language problem. So I have deposited our week more often than not. At present I have two in hand. One expires in July 2021 and the other in July this year. Then we have a week at the Marriott In Estepona and I had no choice but to bank this year’s week.
Back to Cameron House where we bank through a massive Time Share company called Interval International. They’ve been pretty good in the past though they did once send us to an exchange in California which turned out to be a glorified trailer park. Having flown all that way and driven about a 100 miles after battling through LAX Immigration to find that we were meant to share with a group of people jumping up and down in a miniscule pool with their greasy pony tails bobbing in the equally greasy water and Harley Davison tattoos on display , we turned around and left. It wasn’t the best experience of my time-share life.
Last year we got a great exchange in Rhode Island and we were thinking of returning, but, maybe another day. So, the week that is expiring in July this year needed addressing. I got through surprisingly swiftly and thought that with my expertise on handing consumer services I would be sure to get them to agree to extend my week for another a year. Silly me. After some heated debate they extended it till October. I tried to explain that I was classified as Highly Vulnerable and then I thought of referring them to my nameless pal at the NHS to verify me. Nothing worked. I pointed out that if the bloke could find me anywhere to stay in October with full facilities and a plane to take me there and guarantee that I wouldn’t die when I got there, then I might agree. Then he said I could always pay £150 to extend it for a year! You can imagine my response to that suggestion.
We finally parted on the basis that we would be resuming our conversation in September, so if I am still blogging by then, watch this space.
Anyway, National Holiday today in the States, Religious Holiday in Germany, Jerusalem Day in Israel and Bank Holiday here. And it’s Friday. So have a good Sabbath, a good weekend and stay safe and well wherever you are and if I am spared , see you all on Sunday.
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