Unprecedented is a word much bandied about since the Covid crisis struck. But no other adjective adequately describes two extraordinary surprises in the Utley household on Wednesday, separated by less than two hours.
The first was shortly before 7pm, when Mrs U was chatting idly to a friend on the telephone, carrying on a conversation she’d started a half-hour earlier.
I tapped my watch and threw her a significant look, which she must have understood. Unbelievably, she ignored me. As the minute hand ticked round to 6.59, I tapped again. And again at 7.01, more urgently this time. Still no reaction.
She just kept rabbiting on about nothing. By 7.02, as the familiar theme-tune struck up quietly in the background on Radio 4, I feared she must have lost her marbles.
‘Oy!’ I hissed. ‘The Archers!’
Religion
She looked at me as if I was the one who’d gone mad. Putting her hand over the mouthpiece, she said: ‘Who cares? It’s just boring these days. Now, be quiet. I’m talking to Harriet.’
I’ve never been much of an Archers fan myself, and I could have told my wife 40 years ago that the programme was less than scintillating
Was I hearing this aright?
True, I’ve never been much of an Archers fan myself, and I could have told my wife 40 years ago that the programme was less than scintillating.
But for Mrs U, keeping up with the events in Ambridge has been almost a religion since long before I met her.
As many friends who have been unable to stop her have discovered to their horror, she can describe almost every plot development since the early 1960s — and woe betide any family member who has dared utter a peep during the sacred 13 minutes when the weekday instalment is on.
So addicted had she become that she suffered terrible withdrawal symptoms when the long-running serial — which is recorded in advance — was briefly taken off the air after Covid-19 struck, when it became embarrassingly clear that news of the lockdown had not reached Ambridge.
Since its return, however, with a series of dreary monologues recorded at the actors’ homes as the cast can no longer work together in a studio, her heart has gone right out of it.
In normal times, she would have wound up her conversation with Harriet, mid-sentence, the moment I’d first tapped my watch (‘Sorry, must go. It’s the Archers!’) Now she no longer cares. Like so much else, it’s just not the same.
As many friends who have been unable to stop her have discovered to their horror, she can describe almost every plot development since the early 1960s
Indeed, I’ve suffered similar disillusionment with some of my favourite programmes. Take Have I Got News For You; recent instalments have come from participants’ homes via some sort of app such as Zoom, which makes comic timing impossible.
Despite the panellists’ heroic, forced efforts to laugh at each other’s electronically delayed jokes, the whole thing has fallen excruciatingly flat.
Or Question Time. Though I’ve been very favourably impressed by the way Fiona Bruce has filled David Dimbleby’s shoes, even she has been unable to inject interest into the programme during lockdown, with no studio audience to bring politics to life.
It’s the same with the virtual pub, run via Zoom by my fellow regulars, which I visited at the start of the lockdown. Far from cheering me up, I found that our stilted, electronic conversations and faux bonhomie just depressed me further. It made me yearn all the more for the real thing. One visit was enough.
But I said there were two unprecedented surprises in the Utley household on Wednesday evening, and the second was almost more remarkable than the first.
This was at about 8.30pm, when our youngest son — the only one of our four currently in residence — switched off the TV in the sitting room and came to join his parents in the kitchen.
I should explain that since his earliest childhood, Harry has lived and breathed football (another passion I don’t share with my near and dear). Since day one of lockdown, when he was in Colombia under even tighter restrictions than our own, he’d been praying every day for the return of the beautiful game to give his life meaning once again.
Now the long-awaited day had finally arrived, and football was back on screen, with the first Premier League matches in three months.
Yet after barely 15 minutes of the Manchester City v Arsenal game, he had given up on it, choosing to join his parents watching property show Location, Location, Location instead.
Indeed, I’ve suffered similar disillusionment with some of my favourite programmes. Take Have I Got News For You
Liberation
We asked him why on earth he wasn’t watching the match. ‘It’s just boring without the fans,’ he said. ‘It’s like watching people kicking a ball about on the common, with fake cheering piped round the ground like canned laughter. It’s a shadow of the real game.’
Let’s face it, ours is a social species — and whatever our tastes, we need human interaction and other people around us to give life its interest and point.
Indeed, it’s not just to save the economy that politicians should shake off their paralysing caution and bring on the day of liberation.
For our sanity’s sake, too, they should open up schools, pubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, galleries and sports grounds — and the sooner, the better.
Or are they determined that we should all die safely of boredom?
Historic day Dame Vera won my heart
The one and only occasion on which I met Dame Vera Lynn will live on in my memory until my dying day.
It was 1995 on the 50th anniversary of VE Day, and I had been asked to join the great lady at a champagne reception on a terrace overlooking the River Thames, where we stood side by side watching a fly-past by Spitfires and Hurricanes.
Never have I felt closer to history than on that particular day, watching those particular aeroplanes in the company of that particular woman, who represented so much about the spirit that kept Britain going through World War II.
The invitation had been my reward for having ghost-written an article under Dame Vera’s name, which recorded her memories of 50 years earlier.
This was a job for which I’d been selected for no better reason than that I was known to have cleared Fleet Street pubs towards closing time with my passionate renditions of We’ll Meet Again and The White Cliffs Of Dover — songs that I’d learned at my mother’s knee and have loved ever since.
The one and only occasion on which I met Dame Vera Lynn will live on in my memory until my dying day
I confess that I was nervous about being introduced to Dame Vera. This was because she’d been extremely busy in the run-up to the anniversary and I’d had to base an article of more than 1,000 words on a single telephone conversation with her, which had lasted barely two minutes before she’d had to dash off to her next engagement.
Though her husband had cleared what I’d written, I wondered if she’d actually read it.
In fact, I rather hoped not, fearing that I might have got something wrong, or failed to reproduce her authentic language and tone. Megastars, after all, can be highly sensitive.
I needn’t have worried. As soon as we were introduced, she flashed me a devastating smile and delivered the highest praise a ghost-writer could hope for.
‘I just loved our article,’ she said (and how I loved that ‘our’). ‘It was as if I wrote every word of it myself!’
I won’t be the first to have said this since Dame Vera’s death yesterday, at the venerable age of 103. But she was a lovely lady, totally unspoiled by decades of adulation. I hope and pray that we’ll meet again.