Wednesday, May 19, 2010

A News Sandwich


Driving home yesterday sound tracked by a talk between the two people in the picture above yesterday's post - Kim Phuc - the Girl in the Picture - and the ITN reporter who filmed the event - Christopher Wain. As first from the gentle and measured voice, I thought that Kim's voice had been overdubbed by an actor but the fact that she was in conversation with Wain proved that is was her. It was humbling that having suffered the horrors of that explosion, she was so calm and measured. I would still be ranting and screaming as the injustices of it all. Despite this, after years of being a prisoner of "that photo" Kim has taken control and used her fame to do good works. She was instrumental in getting treatment for Ali Abbas, the Iraqi boy who lost his arms in a missile strike on his house. You can hear the whole programme here.

This was followed by Brian Cox talking to Matthew Parris after choosing Carl Sagan for the Great Lives programme. But in between was a trailer for a radio version of what must be the most sentimental story ever written and yet one which gives me a lump in the throat that matches that from "Daddy! My Daddy" in The Railway Children. This is The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico which will be on Radio 4 this Sunday at 15:00. My headmaster at Middle School once played the whole school a recording of this story read by Spike Milligan and it was excellent.

Meanwhile we wait for the details of the biggest shake-up in British Politics since 1832 and shame on you if you don't know what that was.

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