Monday
For the third time in three years, I made my way to Sky HQ in west London to cover the televised debate – this time the Theresa May v Jeremy Corbyn interrogation – from their spin room, otherwise know as the seventh circle of hell. If you want to experience the true madness of a general election, you need go no further. Within minutes of arriving it was impossible to avoid senior politicians and spokespeople from both sides explaining why their leader had already won the debate that wasn’t scheduled to start for another two hours. Peak madness was reached an hour before kickoff when Adam Boulton tried to talk to Boris Johnson and Labour’s Andrew Gwynne about their expectations for the programme live on air from the spin room. Having been kept under wraps for so much of the campaign, Boris – like any true narcissist – decided to take full advantage of any air time he could get. Halfway through the interview Boris got bored and decided he was going to run the show his way. He refused to let anyone but himself speak, interrupted anyone who tried to get a word in, and repeatedly pawed at Gwynne. On any other occasion this could have been a career-ending piece of TV for Boris, but in the spin room it counted as normal.
Tuesday
British Airways’ explanation for the computer outage that left thousands of people stranded was questioned by some. Asked why the airline did not back up their system like everyone else does, Alex Cruz, BA’s chief executive, said it did have a backup system. The problem had been that the backup system had unfortunately chosen the very same few seconds not to work as the main system. That’s not my idea of a backup system. As well as having to compensate everyone for the inconvenience, the airline is also struggling to reunite passengers with their luggage. Photographs of suitcases piled up in any spare corner of airport terminals reminded me of the time 25 years ago when my friend Alex arrived in Miami to discover that BA had managed to lose his suitcase. After spending two hours at customer services explaining that everything of value he needed for his trip was in the missing case, a BA official finally took pity and authorised compensation to cover his losses while he was in the US. On his way out of the airport, Alex stopped to go to the toilet and found his case abandoned in a corridor outside the gents. He never did hand back the money. He reckoned BA would never realise it was missing.
Wednesday
In between sharing his humble humility with the pope and terrifying everyone with his threats to pull out of the Paris climate agreement (which on Thursday, he made good on) President Trump still manages to find time to provide entertainment with his unique grasp of language. His tweet “Despite all the negative press covfefe” led to someone buying up the domain name Covfefe, others to change their Twitter accounts to The Dark Lord of Covfefe and I am the Wizard of Covfefe and everyone else to have great fun at The Donald’s expense. The biggest laughs though were reserved for Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, who tried to convince reporters that his boss had not accidentally misspelled “coverage” in one of his regular late night bouts in the Twitter echo chamber. When asked whether people should be concerned about The Donald sending out incoherent tweets, Spicer said: “No. The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.” How very reassuring.
Thursday
There are several alternative careers I would have quite liked. One is to have been an academic, but that got scuppered early on when I realised I wasn’t bright enough. Having done reasonably well as an undergraduate at Exeter, I went on to do an MSc in political sociology at LSE and quickly realised I was hopelessly out of my depth. The only way I could guarantee to pass the course was by writing my dissertation on a subject none of the academics knew anything about. So while my fellow students were writing about “A poststructuralist interpretation of the permanent revolution” – this was 1980 – I wrote mine on “Nationalism in 19th century Italian and German opera”. The blank expressions on the faces of the two course tutors who were tasked with giving me feedback left me with the impression that neither of them had read it. So the invitation I received this week from an English professor at Oxford to a formal dinner at Worcester College in the autumn has completely made my year. If not my life. Kudos without responsibility is the way forward from here on in.
Friday
Long hours, six-day weeks, endless travelling, tight deadlines: more often than not all to hear politicians say much the same thing as they said the day before. General elections can play havoc with my mental health. During the 2015 campaign, I came close to a meltdown, suffering daily panic attacks for more than a week; only the help of mental health professionals and the support of colleagues on this newspaper saw me through. Touch wood, I’ve made it through the first six weeks of this campaign more or less unscathed but I’ve long since reached the point when I can’t wait for the whole thing to be over. I need something of my life back. One reminder of what I’ve been missing is my garden which is in desperate need of some TLC. I love watching the Chelsea flower show on TV and always order myself some of the more interesting plants that are featured. This year I chose some carnivorous sarracenia from a Hampshire nursery and they duly arrived this morning. They are magnificent and I hope to plant them out next weekend. Then I’ll just need to find a politician to feed to them.
Digested week: Talk to the Hand.
