Phoning a friend...

I did something novel today. I picked up the phone and spoke to an old friend. I hadn't spoken to her for about twenty years, I'm guessing. We keep in touch by sporadic email and by an exchange of  pucker communications on the Christmas card. You know, ones that gives you the juicy highlights of the year in handwriting.

What prompted this spontaneity at 9.05 this morning was that I heard about the Oscar debacle on the wireless. What a mess up. La La Land (my least loved film of the moment) believing that they had received yet another reward, were interrupted in their acceptance speech by being told an error had been made with the envelopes, and that Moonlight had won that category instead. Oh grandissmo cock-up. Nobody hurt. World still turning. But embarrassment factor reaching record highs on the blushometer.

So this morning, I thought of dear Janice who was an Assistant Floor Manager with me in BBC Scotland in the late seventies. She is still in the business and annually does the National Television Awards. She has made mention of the nerve-wracking business of envelopes on the night, and how she becomes their  fiercesome guardian. Terrifying younger colleagues whose mothers were not even born when she first started out in theatre. So I called her to tell her that, at last, the importance of her job had finally been publicly acknowledged.
Well, that is to say, a very old friend delighted in sharing the moment and hearing that wonderful voice again.