Filming in the Library

Apologies to RT for her reading meme which I am looking forward to tackling, but felt I should give an account of last night first.

Filming got off to a dodgy start yesterday evening as two out of four of us on the panel didn’t turn up – they thought it was today. So a passing poet was roped in plus one of the librarians, neither of whom had done any research, of course.

Looking back, I wish I’d re-read some Hardy as I was sitting next to a retired Know It All (ex-teacher I would guess, though no offence to any ex-teachers who might be reading). She was convinced that whatever she said was right, when she was frequently off topic. I shot her down on several occasions, notably to say that I’d never read Hardy since school as I found him too depressing. Being a Hardy Zealot, this enraged her. She was the sort you could imagine on Mastermind, taking Hardy as her Specialist Subject.

Dermot the producer was good at throwing questions at us and one was, ‘how would you interest a 17 year old in any of these writers?’

For once, my brain worked on time. ‘Sex,’ I said, before my neighbour could give Hardy another blast. She merely looked horrified. ‘Get them to read Mary Wesley. They might pick up a few tips.’

I don’t expect that bit will make it to the final edit, but it will be interesting to see. It’s to be shown on Westcountry at the beginning of December – I’ll let you know details as soon as I find out.

However, Himself came and watched and Dermot seemed happy with it overall, despite all of us drying up at some time or other. I managed to give Daphne du Maurier and Mary Wesley a good plug, although to my horror Hardy won the vote for Westcountry Writer. Pah!

Himself says that autographs are available by post. He's organising that side of it, having appointed himself my agent. Knowing his business skills, I think I’ll sack him before he starts, but he’s Very Proud and told everyone this morning on our dog walk, ‘I’m with a Star, you know.’

Later

After walk....

Following on from yesterday’s blog (as always the forerunner in current affairs!) it comes as no great surprise to hear, on BBC News this morning, that a survey has found that while most parents played unsupervised as children themselves, they wouldn’t dream of letting their children do so in case they were seen to be neglectful parents. The piece was then followed by various interviews wondering why this is so. I would have thought anyone with half a brain could work out that the media coverage of first Holly and Jessica, and now Madeleine McCann, has a huge part to play in this.

Surely the obesity problem is linked to this? If we don’t allow our children to run around and play, we keep them inside where we can keep an eye on them. So they put on weight. They don’t let off steam, so their problems become internalised and come out in other directions. And what about children’s imaginations? How do they use them if they’re cooped up all the time? How do they get to meet other kids and run around like kids should do, go swimming or running, fall over, get up again – all the things we need to learn about to grow up. It seems this society’s problems go round in every decreasing circles, fuelled by the media and paranoia.

But how do we get away from this 24 hour news coverage? I worked for one of the first 24 hour TV news channels, and of course then it was such a novelty. Now it’s par for the course. Perhaps we should all chuck our TVs into the sea, turn off our computers and stop reading newspapers. But I can’t see that happening, can you? It’s too addictive…..