beautiful monsters

Beautiful Monsters on the Air

When I first received an email, purportedly written by someone from BBC Radio 4 in the UK, I almost dismissed it as really weird (and rather cruel) spam. But I wrote back, just in case. And I did some research. Yes, there really is a Radio 4, in fact, it’s mentioned in the book I’m reading, Martyn Pig. And yes, the programme she mentioned, Soul Music, really does seem to exist. Apparently R read about one of my poems, right here, or possibly here, or maybe even here, but somewhere on Beautiful Monsters anyway. She was working on a programme about Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, and she wanted to interview me about my poem. I still thought it was odd, and increasingly elaborate spam, but I gave her my number anyway, just in case. And then I got a phone call, from a real live person with a real life BBC accent... but even that didn’t entirely convince me. R sounded so close. She could have been phoning from just around the corner, somewhere in Wellington. It could still be some kind of practical joke. When she arranged a time for me to go into Radio NZ and record the interview I expected to be greeted with blank looks. “Who? Where? Radio What? I’m sorry, we’re going to have to call security...”

This afternoon my asthma got worse – it’s been playing up for about 6 weeks now. I went in to see my doctor, and since my inhalers weren’t doing much, she plugged me into a nebuliser. Haven’t needed one of those since I was three years old, and probably needed the little teddy bear demonstration. Then she gave me some new fangled drugs, and my old friend prednisone (I came off my last course about a week ago). I have no idea why I’m feeling this compulsion to link to the most boring things. Anyway, tonight was the night of my supposed radio interview, so I was listening to my wheezing breaths, wondering what they’d sound like over the airwaves. Scary raspy heavy breathing, not the impression I was going for.

I turned up at RNZ house a few minutes early, and someone was coming out the after hours exit, so I snuck past them and made my way to the lifts, keeping my eyes open just in case Kim Hill had decided to work on a Thursday evening for some reason. When I got to the reception I knocked on the glass doors, and a woman looked up with an accusing “what the hell are you doing here” sort of look. She came and opened the door a few millimetres. “Yes?” “I’m supposed to ask for C,” I said. “Oh, are you his daughter?” she asked, her expression softening. “No… er…” She looked suspicious again, but went off to find C. I caught the door as it swung shut again, and wondered if I was allowed to come in. I decided to wait in the doorway, but kept it open with my foot. C appeared, looking puzzled. “How did you get up here? It should be locked up downstairs. I’ll have to call security.” All my excitement sank back into my stomach with a big thwack... no, wait, that was just the door bumping into me as I drew back my foot. But C’s face was crinkling into a smile. “You’re a few minutes early, I wasn’t expecting you yet. Come on, I’ll show you around.” He was absolutely lovely, and chatted away, helping me to relax. He looked a bit worried when I sat down at the table and produced a bunch of inhalers, some pills, a bottle of cough syrup and some throat lozenges and proceeded to stuff them all into my mouth...

Somehow Kim Hill came up (can’t think how that happened) and he got me to recite my ode to Kim as a microphone test. I stumbled after a few lines and forgot the rest, but he said I should send it to her. “Nah, I dunno.” “Well, I’m going to tell her you wrote her a poem anyway.” “Aw... she’ll think I’m an obsessed fan!” He chuckled and told me about travelling around with Kim for the FM launches, and a woman who’d hung around for hours at the launch in one region, and then turned up in another region. Then she sent them hand knitted woolen gloves (for the techies they had holes at the fingertips so they could feel the buttons) cos she knew they were heading down to the South Island and they might get cold. Is a poem more or less obsessive than hand knitted gloves?

Then R came on the line, sounding as though she was still waking up (it was 7am over there) but still warm and friendly and enthusiastic. The interview went well, I think. Not that I have many other radio interview experiences to compare it to. My voice sounded slightly nasal and husky, but I don’t think I wheezed much, or said anything particularly stupid. I did realise afterwards that I kept referring to “my grandmother” and “my dad” etc, which felt a bit unnatural because I usually call them by their names, but I guess I needed to explain who they were to me... anyway, I think I only called my grandmother by her name once in the whole interview, which was strange. But other than that, it was lots of fun. C told me off afterwards for making him cry.

The programme will probably air in July, I’ll post details (when I get them) in case anyone over there wants to have a listen... or even from here, you can listen over the net. Hooray for modern technology. Without it I’d probably be dead. And less famous.

Heather and I were talking about my first asthma attack, and about my grandmother dying, and she went to check some dates in the diary, and found these gorgeous entries.

Gave Fiona a book about dying. Later she saw some brown autumn leaves on the ground, and she noticed that they were crunchy. “Is June crunchy?” she asked. I tried to explain that June would turn into dust. Then Fiona asked “When is Eric going to take June to the dump?”

and...

Gave Fiona a book called How Babies are Made. She asked Merlin, if a woman wanted to have a baby, did she have to ask a man to help her, and he said yes. Fiona replied that she thought she’d feel a bit too shy to ask.

Also an entry about watching Merlin cycle off to work, and Heather telling me there was no point waving because he wasn’t looking at us. “He will look,” I said, and then “He did look.”

Posted by Fionnaigh at June 25, 2004 12:28 AM