Today I recorded this week’s edition of the Talking Newspaper with Susan. Our engineer was Charles. Actually, it started as Charles but then turned into Tim. The reason for the switch in engineer was an unidentified problem with Charles’ broadband connection.
The morning had been a bit stressful as I rushed to make the deadlines involved in a single day edit, prep and recording session. The newspaper arrived at 9:30 and I started straight away. We were set to record at 2:30 and I managed to finish everything by about 1:45. I had a couple of short breaks but basically it was pretty full on.
I connected with Charles and we chatted for a bit. We were shortly joined by Susan and, a little bit early, we made a start.
I read the introduction. Charles stopped me and said there were too many pops and crackles. I read the introduction again. Charles stopped me again. The third time was going quite well until it was Susan’s turn to read. She seemed to have vanished.
Susan rang Charles. Charles suggested we all turn our equipment off then back on again (he’s very much an IT professional) and see if that improved things. It didn’t.
Drastic action was required. Charles rang Tim, asking him if he could take over as engineer in order to see if the problem was at Charles’ end. Tim was free and so we started again.
I read the introduction for what felt the millionth time. This time I managed to get to the end when there was a strange scratching sound coming through my headphones. Tim stopped me in order to investigate the weird noise. Susan laughed, saying it was her cat. There followed a bit of a scuffle as she ejected him from the room she was in.
We started again.
This final time, we managed to get beyond the beginning. The thing is, once you’ve stopped and started so many times, it’s like a snowball as mistakes start littering the recording. At one stage, I read one article only for Tim to apologise, saying I’d have to read it again because he’d muted me.
Then there was the time Susan’s phone rang. Loudly. She said she was sure she’d turned it off. If so then her phone has a very nasty habit of turning itself back on again.
Somehow, we managed to get to the halfway break and stopped for a breather.
Then, as if the ancient gods were done toying with us, the second half went beautifully with no real problems. It was with great relief that we finished, and I flung the window and door open in my garden office. The air had started to run out.
Anyway, we managed to finish recording it in three hours. Poor Tim then had to put the edition together. His email, letting us know it was complete, was sent at almost 10:30pm. He quite generously added at the end
Many thanks to Gary and Susan for coping admirably with the somewhat chaotic start after swapping with Charles due to his broadband problems, and for making my post-processing job comparatively straightforward – despite my finger trouble, the ringing phone, and Susan’s cat trying to upstage everyone!
It was possibly the messiest edition I’ve recorded though still great fun.
Then, coming out of the office and checking Twitter, I saw that Una Stubbs had died. All of the tributes testified to the fact that she was a lovely person who will be greatly missed.
Later in the day, Nicktor sent me a few photographs from yesterday’s shoot. Here’s my favourite.
The little plaque between the scarf and Nicktor is Bill. We like to include him in these sorts of things.
