People that read newspapers are absolute lunatics. I had to deal with a lunatic today. An 80-year-old woman who insisted on being anonymous phoned up to complain about a letters page I’d subbed. “I don’t believe that letter is real,” she said. I pointed out it was, I’d seen it, and not only was it one genuine letter it was two (by the same writer!) that I had cleverly edited together. “What?” she shouted, not fully able to grasp what “we reserve the right to edit any letters submitted for publication” means. She questioned part of the address we had printed. “I know this woman. I don’t think much of her. And that’s not her address. You’re printing lies,” she continued. And that was just the start. Off she went, telling me how she hated the media, especially the BBC, and that she held the media partially responsible for the death of Christopher Alder (he died while in the custody of the Humberside Police, who watched him choke to death). I told her not to generalise about the media but she was having none of it. “If you could let me have your name and number, I’ll look into what happened with the address on the letter,” I said, trying to draw 20 minutes of getting nowhere to a conclusion. “I won’t,” she said, “You never know if you’re safe or not in this country if you give them your name and address. I’ll phone you when I’m ready for an answer.” Then, for reasons that can only be related to an onset of dementia, she added: “I like you, you seem like a lovely man.” What, apart from working in the media, you mean?
The weekend is upon us. It will be a weekend of garden centres, gardening, playwriting and zombies of the Shaun of the Dead variety. And two cans of Dutch export lager are waiting for me in the fridge…