Life can get very surreal at times. I was up at 6:00 this morning, to help get my partner up and out the front door, where a taxi awaited to ferry her down to BBC Southampton, en route to the railway station. Then, 90 minutes later and back in bed, I heard her voice on the radio, being interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about some academic work for which she had no responsibility and which, in the customary fashion, the Today presenter was trying to misrepresent into something a little more newsworthy than the balanced but nuanced presentation of the bleedin' obvious that most worthy academic work turns out to be. It was all a bit unusual, to say the least.
Although I suppose this is pretty much a regular experience for those in that notorious metropolitan liberal elite, the ones who operate the media and who provide 80% of its content. "Saw you on Newsnight, darling... I thought Evan was being jolly unfair, and I shall tell him so on Friday at Kirsty's. Will you be there?" Which may explain how they (don't think I need to start saying "we" just yet...) end up stuck in a feedback loop / echo chamber / Westminster bubble (choose your favourite metaphor) and, as a consequence, have become so radically out of touch with the populace at large that the idea that Brexit / Trump could ever actually happen was unthinkable. Unthinkable? They should have read my blog! Read it and believed my non-metropolitan words of wisdom! Yeah, right...
Meanwhile, back here in the real world, I hear my desktop has been fixed, and is ready to collect. Yes! It's been a bit of a trial, trying to edit raw files on an uncalibrated laptop, without most of the little plugins and other such helpful stuff I've installed over the years. As someone once said, don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til Windows 10 refuses to boot, and you discover your RAM board has totally failed?
7 comments:
Mike your description of the "liberal elite" in the media is spot on, it amuses me watching/listening to these idiots taking enterviewees to task on the forthcoming brexit completely oblivious to the fact they themselves got both the national election and the referendum completely wrong, a little mea culpa wouldn't go astray.
Read your excellent piece on your experiences in 2009 with your neighbours, you must have had a crystal ball back then Mike, I must ask how have you fared out since neighbour wise?
Yes, "never apologise, never explain" is tattooed on them all somewhere. It's how you know you've joined the club.
It sometimes feels like I have a bit of a Cassandra gene -- able to see fairly clearly what will happen, but cursed never to be believed (at least, by anyone in a position to do anything about it).
Neighbours have been fine since (touch wood) -- currently Portuguese nurses -- but it's nice to know there's always the flat in Bristol to retreat to if things go bad again...
Mike
do you know how the tyre got in the tree?
Hey, mistah charley, ph.d., what are you implying? In the words of Bart Simpson, "I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything!"
Mike
I heard the interview Mike, in the company of another expert in early years education. She listened as a fellow professional, I listened to a voice I hadn't heard for decades. Right near the end she made one particular vowel sound that was unmistakably hers. Otherwise, I bet she had her interview voice on.
Andy,
Good to know someone else was awake at that hour!
Mike
Obviously some girl chucked that tyre up the tree to impress her mates.
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