Salut!

Expat life: "Hi, press office here, is there anything we can't do for you?"

colin randall — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:02:55 +0100

What is a press officer for? What do public relations people do? Forgive me for asking ...

Imagine the guffaws if an estate agent appealed for sympathy because some of his more overpriced properties attracted no buyers or tenants.

And what would be the natural response to a used-car dealer’s bleatings about a lack of buyers for rusty old bangers?

Since journalists figure even lower, by comparison, in public esteem, I realise only too well that no one will shed tears for a reporter who mopes about a few unreturned calls.

But since I am rather closer to the end of my career than its beginning, I feel entitled to share some genuine uncertainty about the role in society of the press officer.

Lots of us have sons or daughters, or friends or acquaintances, who take media courses with a view to working, if not as journalists, in the field of press relations.

But what will they do when they enter that field?

Consider some examples that help explain why I consider the question worth asking.

Alastair Campbell, whose long service to Tony Blair brought him a reputation for bluster, spin and profanity, was a press officer who saw it as no part of his role to assist the press. I heard him say as much in a lecture in Paris.

Campbell could only admire the human brick walls I recently came up against in France. Together, their real names make them sound like a firm of solicitors, though we shall call them Mme X and Mme Z, the press officers of two giant supermarket chains.

Readers of The National who saw my report on rising sales of halal foie gras in France will have noticed only passing reference to one of those chains and none to the other, even though both have stores where the delicacy is successfully sold.

You may think the companies would have been delighted to co-operate in the preparation of a story, but I lost count of how many times I telephoned or e-mailed with simple requests for assistance. By the time the article appeared – thanks to the kindness of people in a Muslim quarter of Paris – Mme X and Mme Z had failed even to provide basic information, as promised, on the sales of these products.

Although I could mention plenty of instances of a similar manque de politesse having nothing to do with France, it does seem a peculiarly French trait to require verbal requests to be confirmed by fax or e-mail and then to ignore the communication altogether.

So I am left with an innocent question, to which someone out there must have the answer. What is it that press officers do, and find so time-consuming, that they simply cannot bring themselves to deal meaningfully with members of the press?

* From my East/West column in The National, Abu Dhabi.

Mark my words: vile bodies

colin randall — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:10:00 +0100

"Maggie, Maggie, Maggie," was the cry on every left-wing demo of the 1980s. You'd have to be very young, or to have led a sheltered life, not to know the response. From today's My Word column in The National, Abu Dhabi ...

Jack London was an American writer who lived a short, complicated life during which he enjoyed considerable success with his novels, short stories and non-fiction, and also embraced a class warrior’s brand of socialism.

He was occasionally accused of plagiarism, though this is not the reason questions have been raised about his authorship of The Scab, one the most fiery pieces of rhetoric written in the history of trade unionism.

The doubts arise because of the style of language, which is considered out of character for Mr London, and also the item’s absence from his known body of work. That said, The Scab is generally attributed to him.

As many will know, it is a powerful diatribe, beginning with the assertion that once the rattlesnake, toad and vampire had been created, there was some “awful stuff” left over with which the “scab”, or strike-breaker, was made. The resulting creature was a “two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue”.

The Left, it has often been said, has all the best tunes. Does it also have a monopoly on the most effective words? The answer probably depends on one’s own political viewpoint. But whether it comes from the Left or Right, political sloganising relies overwhelmingly on snappy one-liners rather than the sustained abuse of The Scab.

The left-wing slogan that comes most readily to mind when I think back over the past 30 or 40 years is “Occupy, nationalise, fight for the right to work”, even though it mixes a governmental function (nationalisation) with encouragement to workers to take direct action. The chant was often heard on demonstrations in Britain during the Thatcher years, as was the cry “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie”, and its inevitable response “Out, out, out”.

In the United States, from much earlier, “We shall overcome” became the catchphrase of the civil rights movement, while the American Right’s “Better dead than Red” removed any doubt as to its true feelings on communism.

British Conservatives had “Labour isn’t working” and, a little later, “Labour still isn’t working” towards the end of the 1970s.

Also in Britain, and from roughly the same era, there was a chant specific to the city of Birmingham, informally known as Brum. When the extreme right-wing National Front staged a march there, anti-racist counter-demonstrators chanted relentlessly: “Nazi scum get out of Brum”.

Within a week or so, the taunt could be heard in adapted form on the lips of supporters of one of the big Birmingham football clubs, Aston Villa. Visiting fans of Manchester City were taunted throughout a game I attended with “City scum get out of Brum”.

So the process that produces memorable political slogans is not so distant from the origin of banter on the football terraces.

Someone dreams up the phrase, line or verse; those of similar allegiance then learn to recite it in unison. Now that all-seater stadiums have in many cases replaced the terraces of the past, chants often start with the command “stand up”, supporters being urged to their feet to declare love or hatred for this or that player or club (eg “Stand up if you hate Man U”, to the tune of the pop song Go West). More sensible spectators, preferring to remain in their seats, now try to drown out the first two words of each phrase with a rival instruction, “Sit down”.

A lot of what is heard, or seen on banners, at football games and on the streets during protests is charmless, infantile or obscene.

And sometimes, the sentiments can seem distinctly off-message. But I must confess to a sneaking regard for the French students who, during a series of bitter anti-government demonstrations about unemployment, came up with Á bas le travail – “Down with work”.

Expat life: diminished mobility

colin randall — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:41:36 +0100

Getting on, but not getting there. Familiar ground for readers of recent items at Salut! and Salut! Sunderland, but I couldn't resist another look - posted during another long wait for a simple job on my car at Renault - at recent transport woes ...

As the passing of years accelerates, certain advantages appear. Even though I can still dart around a badminton court to moderately useful effect, and become as excited at football games as a schoolboy, I also qualify in the UK for “senior” travel passes.

That means free bus and Tube travel in London and discounts for nationwide rail travel that often mean a first-class seat, with free access to the internet, is hardly more expensive than second.

Better still, the passes are issued to men before pensionable age to ensure equality with women, who in Britain retire five years earlier. And they can sometimes be used to obtain concessionary prices for admission to cinemas, museums and other places of entertainment or enlightenment; a restaurant owner flattered me by saying I would need to produce mine – which I did not have with me – before she’d accept that I was entitled to choose from her cut-price “pensioners’ menu”.

There are aspects of growing old I could well do without: declining physical powers, occasional forgetfulness and the acknowledgement of mortality that comes with having to attend rather more funerals than seemed to be the case in earlier life.

And there comes a time when a four-hour delay, whatever the reason and whatever it is you are kept waiting for, feels like a cruel and unusual punishment.

I have just experienced two such delays, each independent of the other, within the space of 16 hours. To be stranded, helpless, in a train stuck behind another for most of the evening is bad enough. If you are kept hanging around in a garage next morning for a service that you were told, when phoning to book the car in, would be done “while you wait”, implying an hour at most, it seems fair to assume fate has it in for you.

The details of each inconvenience are unnecessary to relate and I cannot deny that unexpected delays cause irritation at any age. But when you have not long ago become closer to 70 than 50, it is hard to overcome the temptation to reinvent yourself as Basil Fawlty and scream at someone, anyone: “Don’t you realise how much of the rest of my life you’re using up?”

The trouble is that the someone, anyone you choose to shout at might make everything seem a lot worse with the reasonable reply: “Calm down, old man.”

And the sensible response to all these annoyances is, indeed, to remain calm and philosophical and, where possible, make intelligent use of the time.

I tried that on the train. The service promised free wi-fi, I had my laptop with me and there was some unfinished work I could do online. No such luck. The connection was “temporarily unavailable”.

If only I could have found a member of the railway company’s staff – a mission rendered impossible by the sheer number of bodies occupying every space, corridors included, of a crowded train – I might have asked the question: “Is it worth waiting for the connection to be restored?”

* From my East/West column in The National, Abu Dhabi.

Get your cut-price books - and anything else Amazon sells - here

colin randall — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:40:00 +0100

Salut! costs more in incidental expenses to run than it has ever earned. If its author's time has any value, the profit and loss account begins to look sad indeed.

You can help Salut! try to make ends meet, at the same time as helping yourselves, by buying Amazon products via this site. Any book mentioned here, and virtually any not mentioned here for that matter, plus CDs, films, vouchers, gadgetry and all the other things available from Amazon, can be bought at the usual knockdown prices at:

SALUT's AMAZON LINK

My French bolthole: a very old farm with heaps of charm (5)

colin randall — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:50:52 +0100

My friend Emma Lee-Potter continues the story of her mission to restore a dilapidated French farmhouse. Will she eventually get to spend a whole night there - let alone tuck herself away to write the bestseller? It's slowly beginning to look more likely ...

Slowly, slowly, the ugly duckling is turning into a swan. Three years after I made the most impetuous decision of my life and bought a ramshackle farmhouse in the south of France without really meaning to, the place is starting to look like home. There’s no kitchen, no bathroom and we haven’t even slept a night there yet, but it feels like ours at last.

The house (I have to call it that because it still doesn’t have a name) has a stunning south-facing terrace with views to the Roche Colombe, a glass front door which lets the Provençal light flood into the hall, and new windows that perfectly set off the pale, elegant stone.

Upstairs, the builders have worked wonders, ripping out the hardwood partitions that divided many of the rooms and replacing the dodgy floors and ceilings. I only wish I’d been there when one of them stopped everyone in their tracks by walking jauntily across the joists like the tightrope walker he used to be.

The adjoining barn has been utterly transformed too.

Once full of discarded car doors, rusty bits of tractor and several lifetimes of junk, it now boasts two floors and a new roof which cost nearly as much as the house itself.

The vast first floor is so breathtaking that we’re all arguing about what it should be used for. It’s the size of a tennis court and I’m secretly harbouring plans to make it my office. If I can’t write a bestseller there I never will.

When we stayed nearby last summer, my teenage children threw themselves wholeheartedly into the renovation.

In the blistering heat, 18-year-old Lottie painted the huge gates that open into the courtyard (very typical in this part of France) a tasteful shade of pale grey. She liked the colour so much she persuaded the builders to paint the beams inside the house the same hue.

Meanwhile Ned, 15, helped to demolish an entire first-floor ceiling. It wasn’t the ideal convalescence for someone who’d recently broken his collar bone in three places, but he was adamant that he wanted to do his bit.

We became loyal customers at the builders’ merchants in the nearest town and drove back and forth to Crest to hire equipment, buy timber and inspect paint charts. Lottie and Ned are both studying French at school and stunned their teachers on their return by quoting an impressive new vocabulary, mainly comprising words like skip, gravel and digger. How useful these terms will prove in their impending exams I’m not sure.

On sunny days everyone would break for lunch under the plane tree. Generations of farmers have sat in exactly the same place and put the world to rights over a glass or two of Pastis, and we’re proudly carrying on the tradition.

When I first bought the house I used to wake in the early hours and worry about it. But these days I reckon it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.

It may be a while yet before it’s finished but from acrobatic builders to long lunches in the sun, the house with no name has given us so many memories already. I can’t wait to see Lottie scooting elegantly down the drive on a pale blue Vespa, Ned doing crazy bike stunts in the field and all of us sipping Sauvignon in the shade of our plane tree.

Windmills and Wilders: a menace to society or just another windbag?

colin randall — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:19:27 +0100

How concerned should we be that Geert Wilders's cleverly named Party for Freedom (PVV) made strong showings in Dutch local elections last week, actually becoming the largest party in the city of Almere?

The socialists say he and his far Right, anti-Islam, anti-immigrant party are a threat to society. There is real concern that the PVV will now become the majority party in government after the June general election caused by the recent collapse of the coalition.

I visited Almere last week* and spoke to a large number of people, including Ayse Bayrak de Jager, the woman seen in my photo with her little protest banner outside the Stadhuis, or city hall. The message read: "My headscarf, my freedom."

Another woman I met, who had a Russian name but was nevertheless the sort of person Wilders would regard as truly Dutch, said she might leave town rather than live in a place controlled by such people. She also vowed to wear the burqa the day any Wilders administration, local or national, imposed its promised ban.

In fact, the hardest part of my mission to report on the outcome of the elections was finding anyone willing to admit having voted for the PVV. One student said his parents had done so, but not him. A PE teacher said he had not ruled out voting for Wilders in the general election. And finally, after a string of random approaches, I came across Cor Veerhuis, who freely acknowledged that he had cast his vote for the PVV to give them a "chance".

Cor was my taxi driver - journalists frequently pick the brains of such people, and it is not necessarily a lazy option - on a little run around the city (not so little that it didn't cost close on €50). We looked in vain for a house displaying a PVV poster. Since so many people in Almere demonstrably did vote PVV, maybe there really is the sense of shame a couple of other citizens mentioned.

I have read some of the translated speeches and comments of Wilders and you do not need to support an open door policy on immigration to conclude that it does not make for pleasant reading.

But the point is that in the Netherlands of today, it seems highly unlikely that any one party will gain an outright victory in the polls. I cannot see any other party agreeing top share power with the PVV in Almere and cannot see it happening at The Hague either. Decent Dutch folk can probably sleep easily in their beds for now.

* My piece in The National can be found at this link.

How worried

Mark my words: how to break the iconic white van man's heart

colin randall — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:12:23 +0100

Which advertisements succeed in selling you their messages or products? Which ones irritate or enrage? Here are some thoughts on my own hits and misses ...

Advertisers will tell you all about the importance of imagery in delivering the intended message. But they would also caution against underestimating the power of words.

Whether on the printed page, on air or on screen, there is little time to attract attention and keep it. Readers find it remarkably easy to turn the page; viewers and listeners tuned to radio or television can just switch off.

Sometimes, the advertiser resorts to shock tactics to make an impact. The subject matter may well provide justification – who would challenge the UAE’s plans for tough health warnings on cigarette packets – but the approach can still be risky.

This may be the sort of news the advertising industry least wants to hear, but what I least want to hear, ever again, is a current British road safety advertisement that crops up whenever I drive my car.

There is no irritating music. I have no complaint about the voice of the solitary speaker, a well-spoken woman with impeccable diction. The problem concerns the words she uses. She speaks of hearts being broken, but is not talking about love. Instead she proceeds to a graphic account of what happens to the internal organs of someone not wearing a seat belt when a car crashes at 48kph.

I have heard it in full only once or twice. Now, I reach across and switch to another station or turn the volume down as soon as I realise what is coming.

Shock advertising has been with us for some time, and the dangers associated with road travel are a common theme.

With the help of words, sounds or pictures, a disturbing impression is given of some awful event that might be avoided if only greater care is shown.

It is a laudable aim. Another safety advertisement, dealing with the sound of a person being hit on a railway level crossing, is stunningly effectively because there is no sound. The words tell us human flesh and bones make no difference to 450 tonnes of train travelling at speed.

But shock advertising is not alone in seeking that striking first impression. Read or listen attentively and you quickly work out how much care goes into the word content – whether dialogue or direct announcements – of advertisements of all kinds.

Humour is a useful tool. To illustrate the folly of leaving valuables in an unattended car, a couple can be heard chatting happily (and absurdly) about the GPS, wallet and other items displayed invitingly for any passing thief.

A series of Vodafone advertisements plays on the menace of crackly mobile phone lines; in one, the woman spectacularly mishears her partner and convinces herself he is ending their relationship. Any doubt is removed when he exclaims in exasperation: “I’m breaking up – got to go.” “Are you seriously chucking me by phone?” she demands.

British Gas knew what its customers felt about the cost of cooking and heating over the British winter. They also knew some bumper profit figures were due to be announced.

So in the period before and after the results announcement, a soft, soothing male voice has been used, to a backdrop of soft, soothing music, to reassure customers that British Gas appreciates how tough winter had been (without going so far as to admit the company’s part in making it tough). It then makes a virtue out of a modest post-winter price reduction.

To be honest, this does not make me feel especially well-disposed towards British Gas. Nor will I choose my car insurance from a price comparison firm called Go Compare that uses a tenor to belt out unfunny snap answers to a succession of prompts.

But I have remembered them all, just as the advertisers hoped, even if there is one – along with the broken hearts – that I would rather forget: can someone please tell me how a Ford Transit van can be iconic?

* This started life as my words column in The National, Abu Dhabi

Grand Central Stationary (2)

colin randall — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:40:48 +0100

As implied by Salut!'s earlier article on the subject, the introduction of Grand Central's service between London and Sunderland was a thoroughly welcome addition to the national rail network (even if it also draws inconvenient attention to the awfulness of Sunderland Central as a main line terminus).

I have used it several times, both first and second class. As reliability, shaky at first, has improved, the service has become one I would heartily recommend - and of course, away supporters can usually count on a point or three at the other end.

So I am delighted to be able to publish the the company's prompt response to my pieces, here and at Salut! Sunderland, on the events of last night.

I do feel justified in being grumpy, though. After more than three hours stuck on the train last night, getting home at 1.30am and then having to set the alarm for 6.45am, I spent four hours at a Renault garage in London. My car's "service while you wait", which was estimated at one hour when booked and two hours on arrival, took that long (or rather, it took them that long to get round to doing it).

Can't blame Grand Central for that. But here is the operator's statement, in full, on a Sunday night from hell:

“Grand Central Railway apologises to those of its passengers caught up in the disruption in the Hitchin area last night (Sunday). Owing to a Network Rail signalling problem that caused an East Coast service to become marooned in the non-electrified section of the route near Hitchin (where engineering work was taking place) there was severe disruption to all rail services to London King's Cross yesterday evening. The East Coast train had to be assisted out of the affected area by Grand Central's train. Once this was done, we believed our train would proceed straightaway to Kings Cross. However, once pushed clear of the non electrified area, a technical problem occurred with the stalled train, which consequently blocked our onward journey until a rescue locomotive was summoned to take the affected train forward to London Kings Cross. This resulted in several services to Kings Cross being delayed for up to four hours, included the Grand Central service from Sunderland. Taxis were provided for passengers at Kings Cross for onward travel. Network Rail is mounting an enquiry into the original signal problem and East Coast is mounting an enquiry into the cause of their trains subsequent failure which blocked the line to London. Grand Central is supporting both these enquiries and will of course be looking at how we can learn from how the events were dealt with from a passenger’s viewpoint. Meanwhile Grand Central customers involved in this delay are invited to send their tickets to our Customer Services for compensation of the fare for that leg of the journey. Once again Grand Central apologises for any inconvenience caused to our passengers, which were exacerbated by the fact that the Grand Central train, in common with the other trains affected were very busy, because train paths were severely limited by the planned engineering work in the Hitchin area.”

e train paths were severely limited by the planned engineering work in the Hitchin area.”

Grand Central Stationary (1)

colin randall — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:42:11 +0100

The run of boyhood bad luck that made me a Sunderland supporter has spread to the Grand Central train company.

Just when I was thinking of writing something about how much I appreciated the direct service between that that far-off northern destination and London, I ended up being stuck with 100s of other hapless travellers for more than three hours in the gloom of a Hertfordshire Sunday evening.

A train in front had broken down, or "failed" to use the word preferred by the guard - if that is what they're called - on our service bound for Kings Cross.

At first, it seemed a minor inconvenience. Our train would "go round" the other one. After a while, the guard was back on the PA system to say that no it wouldn't. The "failed" train would have to be moved.

The guard promised further information as she received it. Not much can have been reaching the poor girl.

Another age passed and she announced that the train ahead of us had jammed brakes. A loco was being sent from Stevenage to haul it away to wherever "failed", brake-locked trains go.

"I'm just 18 and know nothing about trains," said the girl behind me. "But shouldn't that have been the logical option in the first place?"

This morning, admittedly using a painfully slow internet connection, I have found no reference to this failed train. One or two news reports talk about disruption being caused by an accident during engineering works. My guess, in any event, is that whatever caused the delay, it was probably not a Grand Central train (passengers needing taxis on arrival in London just before 1am were advised to report to Platform 8 at Kings Cross, where an East Coast company rep would be waiting for them).

The last time I was delayed on this Sunderland service was when overnight vandalims in the depot was blamed for a problem that forced our northbound train to crawl along for the first part of the journey. And on the way back, our train had to stop at Hartlepool, go back north and take the old GNER line south from Newcastle. For the sake of variety, vandalism to the track was cited on that occasion.

So Grand Central is suffering from what me might call Arsenal-sized chunks of victimhood.

But before it gets too carried away with its own innocence in all of this, may we consider its own response to the events of last night.

* The train was jam-packed from York, where heaven knows how many people affected by other rail problems had to join us even though they had no seats.

* Throughout that long delay, people without seats had simply to stand, sit or crouch in whatever tiny piece of space they had claimed for themselves.

* No member of Grand Central staff was seen in our carriage at any time after the delay had begun. No check was therefore made as to whether passengers packed like cattle into confined space were in need of water - or anything else for that matter

* The buffet, such as it was was, had run out of beer and sandwiches almost as soon as it had opened, some way before that York stop. It had no hot food of any kind because the oven wasn't working.

* Although the guard did her best to make occasional contact, usually without useful information, via the PA system, she said nothing about what refreshments might still be available to those in need (and also able to climb over the various bodies occupying each square inch of space between them and the buffet).

* The much-vaunted Grand Central on-board Wifi failed to work, as it had done on the northbound journey, and no explanation was offered for this.

As I have said in an account at Salut! Sunderland of this miserable Sunday evening, any lessons learnt from Eurostar's calamitous handling of stranded passengers when its trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel do not seem to have been passed to Grand Central.

There was an unavoidable sense of abandonment on that train. Grand Central may have been unlucky; it was not quite as unlucky as its passengers.

Mark my words: another voice or two

colin randall — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:10:43 +0100

Voices that are pleasing to the ear - that was last week's topic, and I was not surprised when readers, of Salut! and of The National in Abu Dhabi, offered their own choices. Scope, it seemed, for some thoughts on those I overlooked, and why ...

Overwrite is a verb with three possible meanings, according to my Concise Oxford English Dictionary, and none of them is the one I had in mind as I considered possible topics for this week’s column.

You may overwrite by writing on top of other writing. Using the same meaning in the context of computers, the word refers to the act of writing over existing text and eliminating what is there to begin with. A second meaning is to write “too elaborately or ornately”, while a third is to accept, as an insurer, “more risk than the premiums income limits allow”.

My edition of the Concise OED fails to offer a further definition: to write a letter, speech or article at excessive length.

It is something most journalists do. One of the most common tasks known to sub-editors is having to trim verbose prose to give it a sporting chance of fitting the page.

Hardly a week passes without the need for me to cut words from this column. The first draft invariably runs closer to 700 than the desired word count of about 600.

Sometimes, however, the writer is blameless, submitting a report at excessive length because the editor over-commissioned.

I once asked a bright but journalistically inexperienced intern, of Asian origin, to visit English cities with large Muslim populations and obtain the thoughts of ordinary people on the events and aftermath of September 11.

It was part of a significant project for a British newspaper that also involved political analysis, a detailed opinion poll and other interviews. I hoped my protégé would supply 1,500 words; such was his dedication to duty (and inability to summarise) that he wrote three or four times as many. Then the production editor responsible for designing the pages in question informed me that he could take no more than 700, a length he later decided was also too ambitious.

I cannot remember exactly how I broke the news to my contributor that I had been obliged to massacre his fine work, reducing thousands of words to fewer than 400. Such things happen on even the better newspapers; at least we helped the writer seek a home, in a serious-minded journal, for the complete article.

Ten days ago, it became obvious to me that I was beginning to overwrite – my definition – last week’s column on spoken English, especially on radio. I was reminded of the cuts I made when a reader wrote to ask whether I was too young to have appreciated the cricket and tennis commentaries of John Arlott and Peter Ustinov respectively. I am not too young, though Mr Arlott is a distant if pleasing memory and I do not recall Mr Ustinov’s work at Wimbledon.

With more space, I might have mentioned Mr Arlott along with other voices which, from childhood to the present, have given me great enjoyment. The Wikipedia entry for the American comedian Bob Newhart contains much about his television, cabaret and film work. But it is for listening to such classics as The Driving Instructor and Introducing Tobacco To Civilisation that I remember him most fondly. Victor Borge also made me laugh out loud with his Phonetic Punctuation sketch, though I wonder how well it has fared with the passage of time.

The most glaring omission from last week’s column had nothing to do with spoken English but a lot to do with why I find radio news preferable to the televised variety. I have been quietly campaigning against those infuriating hand gestures every television reporter now seems to regard as indispensable. Listening to the radio, there is not the slightest risk of seeing them. If you have never noticed this irritant, pay attention when next you watch television news; you will never forgive me for mentioning it.