Update 33

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This week has been spent with friends Igor and Ellen in the lovely (ex Baptist) Chapel House, Chapel Lane, Bampton, Oxfordshire, and thanks in particular to them, it has been a very real joy. 

Tuesday was the day of the scan and my nervousness proved to have been an unnecessary distraction. When I saw the mighty Siemens I realised its orifice was significantly larger than its predecessor - it was probably 3ft in diameter rather than the claustrophobia inducing 2ft, plus it possessed a tv screen that although physically close to my face was arranged to induce a sense that it could have been 2 ft in front of me - result: no claustrophobia at all and my half hour or so of examination passed without discomfort. I’m hoping for analysis when I meet Dr Silva on Monday next.

On Tuesday evening we went two doors down to the pub, named unusually as  ‘The Morris Clown’. The beer was excellent, so much so that on our return to the house, I was totally “relaxed”. The only downside was that in my relaxed state I failed to concentrate on the task in hand, namely ascending the steps. Omitting to haul myself up with my arms, it was but the work of a moment for my legs to crumple beneath me in what has now been logged as total collapse number three.

Without Margaret I realise that my life would be devastatingly limited. We would travel nowhere, I would have nothing to eat that was even vaguely interesting and any form of social life would be non existent. As things stand, life still retains an (albeit limited) sense of order and purpose about it. My gratitude is boundless.

Mealtime in Chapel House - hymn selection already on display

I‘d not been aware that Chris Tarrant had a book coming out and when a copy caught my eye in the Witney branch of Waterstones I put my hand in my pocket and secured it for my library of radio books. The problem is that I failed to notice its subtitle: ’Stories from 50 Years in TV’. To be fair, a couple of chapters do make reference to his long time (17 years)  as host of Capital Radio’s breakfast Show, but if you weren’t in London during Chris’s reign as the king of breakfast radio then you could be forgiven for seeing his career as being exclusively that of a tv personality.

I was fortunate enough to have lived in London throughout his period in charge and it was a time when Capital was still sustaining  its position as a dominant force in the radio spectrum. I recall when I joined Capital in 1977 and the station’s Managing Director John Whitney explained the way he saw our mission: “I want Londoners to believe that if they’re not listening to Capital then they’re not actually a part of London life. Chris’s time on breakfast went on to epitomise that philosophy and I hope that he may be offered the chance to record more about his perspective on it for the sake of posterity. I also recall that although the USP was our reflection of life in the locality of the nation’s capital, the station’s production values were consciously designed to match those of a national broadcaster.

So what does the future hold for Nadim Zahawi? The head of HMRC chose to make his view clear in a relatively subtle way: he explained that his organisation does not impose penalties just for exercising a lack of care. If Zahawi was indeed penalised, then by definition the “careless but not deliberate error” did not apply. If that had been the case, then HMRC would not have issued any penalty on top of the taxes owed. Open and shut case, or what?

Yesterday, an old school friend called in with his wife Christine. Nevin was part of the public speaking team I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. We hadn’t met for at least 30 years so many memories were dragged back to the surface and as a bonus Nevin was able to recall the time when not only did he work in Cheltenham, but he dined frequently at Gianni - so that’s where we chose to lunch.

On Tuesday we’re going to see another Spielberg movie: ‘The Fabelmans’ has been well received and we’re looking forward to it as another lunchtime Tivoli treat.

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