Lady Muck

A lie-in! A lie in I say again, excitedly! Until 9am. And then I stayed in bed, pointedly, clutching a cup of tea until 11. I felt like Lady Muck. All I needed was a box of chocolates and some sort of bed jacket to complete the look!

The afternoon became about manic admin. I paid a load of invoices and set things up for the recordings for the rest of the week.

I then took a tube to King's Cross to do some research at the British Library. I wanted to find newspaper headlines for a little radio broadcast I'm mocking up to create atmosphere on one of the songs. Quite specifically, the song is meant to be sung on February 15th, 1965. I opted to find headlines in the Guardian, as it seemed the paper which the character who sings the song would most likely read. I was astonished to discover that the Conservative leader's desire to ENTER Europe was the main headline. How hugely ironic!

"Britain in Europe was revived as a Conservative theme by Sir Alex Douglas Home when he spoke at the National Conference of Young Conservatives at Friends' Meeting House, London, on Saturday. Not since the collapse of the Common Market negotiations when Mr MacMillan was Prime Minister has a Conservative leader so eagerly revived the theme."

On page two, a headline read, "Britain must not shirk role in Europe's destiny." Fifty two years later, I find myself quite agreeing!

I watched a shocking Panorama this evening which showed what an enormous spike there's been in race and religious hate crime since the Brexit referendum. Shockingly, bar far the largest spikes came in areas which voted leave. It's difficult to know what to say about that other than that not everyone who voted Brexit was was racist but that all racists voted Brexit. So if you voted Brexit, many thanks for doing your part in stirring up that particularly hideous hornet's nest.

I went into Covent Garden to see if I could get my phone fixed and my laptop injected with more memory. Unfortunately the two issues can't be sorted by a single staff member, so I added myself to a 2 1/2 hour queue to sort the first of my problems and was advised to book online for the other issue.

Michael met me for lunch and we sat in Cafe Rouge, both of us pretending to relax, but secretly doing loads of admin in our heads.

It turns out that my phone can't be fixed for free because it's out of warranty. Apple are sneaky little bastards with their planned obsolescence. The battery life basically started to majorly die a few months after the warranty ran out. It's definitely no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that I stopped being able to hear calls properly at the same time. Very poor form.

To make matters a little more frustrating, EE, my mobile phone provider decided to pack up today. I could neither make nor receive calls. I popped my head into an EE shop to ask when they thought the service might be up and running again, and the man took me over to the counter to "find out more information for me." Minutes later I realised I'd been hook-winked, and that he was trying to get me to take out an early renewal of my contract with the company, offering me a brand new phone and a package which included better storage and calls to America. I stopped him in his tracks, "I'm not sure today is the best day for me to renew my contract with you guys... you may recall that I only popped my head in the door to tell you that your network has gone down." He blushed. I said I'd have a think about his offer. Sadly I may not have a choice!