The Birthday Blog: To Es******* with love, from Kate Adie

“My degree was absolutely worthless” says Kate Adie to me when I question her on her background in ancient Icelandic.
"Should I get out of university now?" I ask her quickly.

I put her new book "Into Danger: Risking your Life for Work" in front of her: “I have taken excellent shorthand notes of your whole talk” I say, not in the least bit ashamed of my monstrous lie; my shorthand is absolutely atrocious, as you might expect.

“Ah, I have never learned shorthand, don’t write a single word” she says wryly, “I started at the bottom” She continues, “Cleaning the desks and backrooms, and then I did six years of editing radio” and I, not knowing quite what to say in return, beam back at her, amazed by the lines of experience that crinkle across her face, her older than expected grandmotherly attitude, and her amazing eyes, full of emotion and adventure and say (convincingly I think) “Gotcha”.

"Is there anyone you would like me to address this book to?"
She asks innocently. Aware I am being watched, I quickly stammer: "Yes, Esperanza"
"Esperanza with a z?"
"Yes" I say.
"Ah, that's a beautiful name."

She seems surprised when I offer her my hand, and shake hers fully, “It’s a great honour to see you. Thank you for your talk” I blurt, grinning like a maniac, and she seems convinced by this, so I rush out to my bike, Green Day blasting in my ears as I ride the rush of adrenaline all the way home, "tomorrow is my birthday" I think, and my heart leaps for joy.


I had arrived late at the lecture, and scurried inside in my baggie lounging trackies and oversize spiderman hoody. I look like the enemy of society, complete with massive headphones and baseball cap, and I’m instantly struck by the awkward counterpoise that I strike here: the enfant terrible of the journalism society, fighting and vying with the department for every inch of latitude I can get, arriving late to witness a speaker of great merit deliver a tour de force speech about her extensive career in war correspondancy.

She has locked the entire room into an avid trance, mesmerizing them with her voice, a voice which seems to me stunted and broken at first, as if rehearsed to death, yet it is stronger and more powerful than any speaker I’ve yet witnessed at university, and not less then 5 seconds into the hall, I too am hooked.

“Linguistics”, she says sternly “is a battleground.” “The language and the tone you use in broadcasting is subject to a great deal of debate”.

I realized when I walked into the room that there was something slightly artificial about her tone, something off kilter, and I’m struck instantly how she is speaking for effect, keeping the audience rapt: she projects a sort of well rehearsed character into the room by sheer force of will, a character modeled on the strong female characters of Britain’s ancient empire, the old world order. They are well rehearsed mannerisms, built up over decades of practice, echoing standards of the BBC, of Queen and country.

“I am speaking now, with SRP.”
“SRP?” she interrogates the room. “No?”
“Southern Received Pronunciation. However, I was brought up on NEE, Northen Educated English! SRP is a progressive form of NEE, it is a later version, and there are myriad waves of standard English”

My heart flutters and my pulse raises tempo, endorphins whizz wildly round in my brain; we are being given a crash course in linguistics by Kate Adie!

“This country has not got a standard and agreed form of pronunciation."
“When you move over [from broadcasting] into writing, are you going to use dialect?” she asks us.

“You cannot use estuarine phases”. 

Oh my god. I peak as she says this: I had no idea that word even existed, I wonder if I could use it in my writing? A broad expanse of watery verbal metaphors stretches out before me in my mind's eye.

“It is a joy and a nightmare working in this country, and it should draw you into a fascination with language” she declares, and I’m hers, absolutely and utterly.

“Who are you broadcasting to? What are they comfortable listening to? Do they like a particular style? You will learn to understand the nuts and bolts of language and how to create a finished project” she declares triumphantly, and it is obvious to anyone with at least one ear, that she knows exactly what she’s talking about, which is ironic, because it turns out that she was born slightly deaf in both ears, and one would think that perhaps it would be inadvisable to spend so much time around bombs, particularly ones which were in the process of exploding.

“The language is infinitely flexible" "You must be aware of how you use language. I am a Geordie, I speak with a flattish NEE, but if I write in Geordie, you wouldn’t recognize it”  she continues, and here she departs into some alien and bizarre northern tongue the like of which I have never heard. It's quite a performance, but I sense that the moment falls flat. Perhaps there are some other aliens in the audience, or perhaps this is just a cheap parlour trick: Geordie accents don't go down too well in London apparently. I make a mental note: "Do not scare your audience".

“There are many grammatical systems, despite the extreme influence of radio and TV, which has had a cohesive effect and ironed out the regional differences to a large extent, and so you must be comfortable with language, language is absolutely central to your career and so therefore, is getting to grips with large numbers of books, so always cock an ear to the radio for a type of verbal approach, inferences, it is germane to what is on the printed page”.

Germaine? I wonder. Is that some kind of coded feminist talk? I’ve never heard of that word before. Is she trying to communicate some kind of revolutionary discursive? Maybe I have misheard. I try ‘cocking an ear’ as she suggests, first to the left, then less obviously, forward, and miraculously find that it helps me to understand more perfectly what she is saying:

“Cocking an ear” is a phrase out of time. And I'm suddenly struck by the feeling that she is communicating to us from the past. I almost squeal in excitement as I tune into her radio voice of 40 years ago. How she learnt to mimic it so accurately is extraordinary, no wonder she is such a legend of the corporation. She truly is the genuine article.

“Ideas:” she begins as my shorthand fails, “I’m lucky in this area in that when people shout: “Where do you get your ideas from?”, as if there’s some sort of cupboard under the stairs where I keep ideas, I can tell them that I write non-fiction because I spent over 30 years as a reporter in extreme situations, and being a reporter is great because you’re paid to be a nosy parker!” she beams.

I’m improvising a little here as I was barred from using a recorder or videoing the talk, so I have to rely on my somewhat frankly dodgy shorthand to recall it all. God I love Esperanza, why can’t I stop thinking about her? Stupid bloody university, if only I could be like Kate Adie, then I could go out and be a journo right now! But mere mortals like me have to go through the proscribed procedures in order to progress, I suspect. Ppp….

It all started when I said something ‘out of sorts’. Yes, I’m arrogant, sometimes, but only a little, and yes, I’m a very fickle person. I choose to love at the drop of a hat, and I love intensely, unconditionally, purposefully putting my heart on the line, testing commitment, making mistakes, always trying to find the dividing line between the acceptable and the outrageous.

“When it comes to publishing, publishers appear to have swallowed a library”. Says Kate, waking me from my reverie.
“Publishers read and read and read and ALL THE TIME, and I’m constantly humiliated by publishers” she squarely proclaims, “Its no good writing something that someone has already done a wonderful book about six months before.”

“So publishers can help you find out how to sell your ideas to people, and how to grab their attention”. My attention keeps on lapsing however. I’m so glad Esperanza isn’t here afterall. It was bad enough creeping in late looking like the local drug dealer. I would have suffered from acute embarrassment if I had come in late with Doctor Esperanza Awesome Japanese Punk Biker Miyake in tow.

Alison Baverstock, the organizer of tonight's talk took such a strict line with me about recording the evening that I’d fired off a couple of ill advised emails before my wrath had subsided enough for me to see that I was acting out of manic and unrestrained ambition. I have certainly wrecked a few relatively good relationships in the last week, I pray it doesn’t last or everyone will hate me by the end of this week.

“Oooh! You do such a dangerous job!” Says Kate, mimicking her admirers, and everyone in the audience smiles appreciatively. Of course we know she does a dangerous job, but she sells us on the idea that it is not she who is doing the dangerous job at all. No. She makes a point of finding people who do really dangerous jobs and to illustrate her point she takes us on a trip down memory lane, to the bombed out streets of Belfast.

“I’ve spent 30 years reporting on a civil war, although those words are NEVER EVER USED”. This must be the battleground she referred to earlier, I think, metaphorically. British reporters have a much more insipid word: “They use the word ‘troubles’. Not quite ‘civil war’ but street violence on a MAJOR scale”.

“A riot in Northern Ireland, as a ‘rough rule of thumb” – and here she does the most delightfully charming thing I have ever seen from a woman of her age do, save my adorable grandmother, skewing her head sideways, squinting at the audience and holding her thumb out sideways whilst scrawbbling out the words "rough rule of thumb" before her audience.


“The rough rule of thumb is that a riot in Belfast is 1000 people marching down the street towards you, who are very, very angry”.

...

To be continued Thursday after much more law revision, a very Happy birthday, a law exam and a sound drubbing from Lucy, the Editor in Chief of the riveronline.co.uk for my complete inability to do what she tells me to do...

ps: Mr. Bignell, if you’re reading this, please give me a job at the Independent on Sunday, I promise not to write about my "love" life and only stick to the facts.
☺