The Bird on The Beach (7th April)
Here in Northumbria you hear very little about Scotland in the news, although the exploits of did seem to be dominating the headlines at the start of the week. A different story today as we learn about the . ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Newcastle covered it in every hourly bulletin although I noticed that some of the younger newsreaders may not be aware that 'Scottish Executive' is the term used to describe the Government in Edinburgh. I'm sure I heard one bulletin kick off with the words "A Scottish Executive is telling the public..."
Television news programmes are all over the story too. We watched the late news on ITV last night presented live from the tiny harbour at Cellardyke with a some local neds in the background waving at the camera and calling their friends on mobile phones. It makes you cringe to think this is going out across the U.K.
Worse than that, the Zedettes seem to have become aware of this whole bird flu scare. Each evening, after tea, we've gone down to the beach at Seahouses to play football. Tonight we discovered a dead bird on the beach which immediately prompted all sorts of questions. Of course, you often see dead birds on beaches but now we were in a dilemma about whether or not to report this one.
We checked the latest which seemed to suggest we shouldn't unless we discovered two or more birds of the same species in the same area.
It was a grim end to a bit of a dud day which had also included a trip south to Amble. We'd gone there because we liked the sound of the name, but there wasn't much to see. We doubled back to the little village of Alnmouth which we had passed through earlier in the week. It really is gorgeous and well worth a visit.
On the way back to Seahouses we listened again to ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Newcastle where Melvyn Bragg was being interviewed on the Julia Hankin Show. Melvyn was talking about his new TV series and book and, as Mrs Z pointed out, "he does seem to like the sound of his own voice." Julia is an excellent interviewer, however, despite the lack of obvious 'edit points' when Melvyn is in full flow. She pursued an interesting line of questioning about the number of researchers Melvyn has working for him when he writes a book. The famous man suddenly sounded very defensive as he admitted he had "one or two" on some projects but that he does a lot of the work himself.
Julia is a real star and I'm wondering why we don't hear more of her on network radio or television. I have an idea that we might ask some ´óÏó´«Ã½ Local Radio presenters to co-host various Radio Scotland programmes for a day or two during the summer. It would be fun to get that different perspective and range of voices from around the U.K.
