Something wicked this way stalks

Yesterday marked the greatest moment of my working life in London. That’s not to say much, given it’s been only a year and in an entirely one-dimensional capacity, but even so, this was big. This was a coup, this was an Everest: Attenborough.

A brush with a hero is a rare occasion indeed. That’s part of heroes being heroes: they have a distance and an impenetrable aura about them that underwrites your reverence. If you bumped into a hero in your local cafe week, it would take a little lustre off. At least in my book, that’s how it works.

When I was a kid, at one stage, I remember liking two things in life quite obsessively: collecting books I never read, and animals. I was going to be a vet and one day I was going to read all of the books I had collected, just as soon as I finished the collection. All three of these things never happened- I’m not a vet, I never read those books and I still haven’t finished collecting books. I gave away all my old CDs, I streamlined my stuff between England, Scotland, Japan and England again and I toss out old clothes before I’ve bought new clothes. Books, though, I can’t really bear throwing away or donating or ditching.

So, I grew up with David Attenborough on the TV, sweating in a jungle and a headlock at the gangly, orange arms of an orangutang; at the poles, with the penguins and much later, just an absorbing voice speaking over gorgeous footage of things I’ll never lay eyes upon at the bottom of the sea or deep in caverns or stashed in wild ravines. He was always around animals. Not so much books. He became, and remains, a hero of mine.

Yesterday, investigating rights of some early ‘90s nature footage to license for broadcast in Japan, our contact at dear old Auntie came back with a message- we would have to run it by David Attenborough if Japan wanted to broadcast anything with him or his voice. And there was his address and his phone number.

As it turns out, Japan only wanted the penguins. King penguins. That wasn’t going to stop me calling up David though. Except, when the phone had rung through a dozen or so times and an anonymous, computerized approximation of a voice had invited me to leave a message, I thought it more respectful to call him Sir Attenborough. I explained the situation and asked him to call us back, although I thought this a ridiculous proposal. Imagine, Sir Attenborough telephoning T--------! Ha!

So today I drafted a letter. The printer at work (we have only one) is playing up and there are two white smears that run down the printed page it spits out, down the right side. I shifted everything left and tried again, but this only eliminated one white smear and left one column of letters half-way between type and hallucination. This simply wouldn’t do. Not for Sir Attenborough. Instead I plan to print it out from the library and send it myself. Or maybe even hand deliver.