Is there a word for the sense of vertigo we sometimes feel about the passage of time? The internet suggests “chronophobia”. That seems in danger of medicalising a response that is perfectly natural, even if occasionally unsettling. One delivery system for these temporal shocks is the anniversary, and 2017 promises to be a bumper year.
Twenty years ago, 1997 really did seem to provide one of those bold historical punctuation marks. For me, personally, it was the year I left Yorkshire for London and met my future wife. For the rest of us it meant the New Labour landslide and Cool Britannia.
It was, of course, also the year Diana died. As a fledgling reporter at Sky, I was working the overnight shift when, in the early hours of August 31, news of her fatal car crash in Paris first came through. So enormous was the public response to her death that my bosses belatedly decided they had to yield to the need for a royal correspondent. The job went to me and my first big task was to prepare for the first anniversary of the princess’s death.
Retelling the story of what happened in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel has never been easy. I met and interviewed the only survivor of the crash, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, only to find that the injuries he had sustained had wiped clean his memory of that critical night.
I also took a camera crew into Dodi Fayed’s apartment, close to the Champs-Elysées, where Diana had been heading after leaving the Ritz Hotel. This was hailed – at least by me – as a journalistic coup, since no other media access to it had been granted since the crash. It was a glamorous bachelor pad where time had stood still. We filmed the exquisite furniture and views, but avoided getting shots of the bedroom’s full-length ceiling mirrors or waist-high tower of “glamour” magazines piled next to the loo.
On the day of the first anniversary of Diana’s death I joined thousands of others at Kensington Palace Gardens in a strange act of remembrance. The atmosphere had lost the revolutionary charge it possessed in the days before her funeral, but it was still febrile. I saw the spiky historian Dr David Starkey escorted away from the scene by police. It was for his own safety. In a TV interview, audible to a crowd containing people who saw themselves as fierce custodians of Diana’s memory, he had questioned the morality of “Our Lady of Versace”.
Many people think – with good cause – that 2016 was another of those seminal years. The Brexit vote and Donald Trump have happened, but the consequences are as yet ill-defined. The swearing in of Mr Trump takes me back to the only inauguration I’ve reported on. It was the 2005 ceremony marking the start of George W Bush’s second term. My broadcasting position was on the roof of the Fox News studios. It would be a lovely spot in, say, May. In January, standing there hour after hour? Suffice to say wind chill is not conducive to enunciation.
This is not an uncommon problem for TV news people. We seek vantage points which afford panoramic views. These are often high up in exposed positions. So, for instance, when we arrive in a city to cover a story the first question put to the hotel porter is often “Can we access the roof?”. This is tricky for someone who suffers from literal – not just metaphorical – vertigo. These broadcasting locations are often where the public is not permitted, so there are no safety barriers. A cameraman’s favourite refrain when positioning a correspondent inches from the edge of a skyscraper’s roof is to smile beatifically and urge us to take “one more step backwards, please”.
Once, in Sydney, a camera operator placed me in front of a tinted window panel which had been removed by hotel staff, so that he could get a view of the Harbour Bridge behind me. We were on the umpteenth floor and, for reasons to do with lighting, I had to stand as close to oblivion as possible. A gale was blowing outside; the floor was like a bar of wet soap (we were next to the swimming pool). After some slipping and swooning, I was compelled to remove my shoes and socks. Not a good look on the telly, but so much better than the alternative.
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