Off to a conference at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, though where I’m headed is not actually in the coastal town of Aberystwyth itself. A shame in the sense that I’m missing the ocean. There’s nothing more unsettling for an Aucklander than being completely landlocked.
The conference is in Gregynog, which looks astonishingly beautiful on the website – and I have high hopes for it given the sudden change of weather we’re experiencing here. The shift from winter to spring in the English midlands is a bit like a handbrake turn in a Valiant. There’s a bit of resistance at first due to all the momentum – but when you finally hit the turn, you sure as hell know it’s happened.
This is a great relief for Bobbie and Jake, who are staying behind in Moseley. We have been without hot water and heating in the flat for the past four days, and look likely to remain so for quite some time. I’ll blog more about our living conditions once it’s all sorted out and I can approach it with my usual laidback humour. Right now it’s just getting boring, frustrating and lawyerly and there are far more things I’d rather be thinking about.
So the weather is lovely – like a good day in an Auckland winter. Warm enough to be comfortable, blue sky in evidence, but enough of a chill at the right ends of the day to keep you in sleeves. And what it’s done is bathe the British countryside in something I haven’t seen in the five months I’ve been here – actual sunlight (there was, now I think of it, that half an hour in Stratford – but that could have just been the lovely buildings and the lake playing tricks on our brains).
But in that sunlight that warms your face through the less than usually grimy train window, you get past Wolverhampton and head out towards the Welsh border, a gorgeous bit of Kenny Garrett with Pat Metheny on the iPod (‘Lonnie’s Lament’ from the Pursuance album – which I unreservedly recommend) and you start to see where the notion of “England’s pleasant green” comes from.
Mother Nature may have her head office back home in New Zealand, but she has branches in the UK. There’s some really lovely scenery. In fact – the closer you get to Wales, the more it begins to resemble the central North Island. By the time you get past Shrewsbury, it might as well be Matamata.
So – the conference. I’m going to be honest: I don’t know a lot about it. It’s essentially a weekend-long discussion of the repercussions of the Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC that was submitted nearly 20 years ago. It’s usually just called the Peacock Report, because of the committee chairman, Professor Alan Peacock, who was the primary author of the document.
Essentially, at the height of the Thatcher years, the BBC changed significantly in terms of its structure and funding. The conference is titled ‘The Peacock Legacy: Turning point or missed opportunity.
Why am I going? Well, despite the fact that it’s not directly connected with the research into online music, or with the digital radio stuff, there is an aspect to the whole understanding the regulatory context of the BBC that is of particular interest, especially as it applies to directions in radio in the UK – particularly from a public service perspective.
There’s also the whole thing about representing the university at conferences and gathering the knowledge and reporting back at seminars.
Then there’s the fact that some of the best minds in British radio academia are going to be at this thing. Jean Seaton from the University of Westminster is on the programme. At one point I was shortlisted to work with her researching the History of the BBC (and particularly this era) – a mammoth project she’s taken over from the now retired Lord Asa Briggs.
I’d spoken to her on the phone a few times, but we’ve never met. I’m hoping to not just have a conversation – but also record one and put it up online.
Then there’s that whole ‘Hey Dubber – want to go to Wales for the weekend?’ aspect to it. Sure, why not?
Changing trains at Wolverhampton, I met a gentleman who fully expects to be on the receiving end of a fair bit of flak this weekend. He was one of the architects of the Peacock Report itself. We struck up a conversation as we were changing platforms and he noticed the Bill Manhire collection of essential New Zealand Poetry that I was finally getting around to reading as I travel from place to place.
Seems a nice enough chap – very British old-school BBC figure of the type that if you lived here all your life you’d probably have reason to resent for his public schoolish ways and ‘My dear boy’-isms, but is enough of a novelty for a kiwi lad to find genuinely interesting. I plan to talk to him some more over the weekend as I unpick this whole Peacock Report thing.
“Good lord – poetry,” he says. “My dear boy, are we heading to the same place, by chance?”
“Train to Aberystwyth, getting off at Newtown – off to Gregynog.”
“Ah, the BBC policy conference. Looks like a delightful place we’re headed. Have you been to Wales before?”
“No. Looking forward to it though.”
“It can be lovely, of course – though I’ve not been to Gregynog myself. And you’re from…?”
“Er – long story, New Zealand originally – but let’s say Birmingham for the sake of this conversation. I lecture at one of the universities there.”
“In English literature, I presume?”
“Media, actually – but I’m quite fond of words, so I’ve managed to carve out some sort of a career around radio. Not that there’s a great deal of overlap between poetry and radio where I’m from…”
“Well, my dear boy – it appears you’ve come to the right place.”
It appears that I have.
