Open Writing

It takes a journalist to know a journalist.

Here’s columnist Robert Crampton, writing in last Saturday’s edition of The Times:

“I know a little about a lot, and a lot about nothing. I absorb myself in a subject for a week or two, hit a problem, get bored, move on, classic journalist’s behaviour. Brain like a boating lake from a distance, all wide and clear and twinkly, yet revealed, as you move closer, as lamentably, almost laughably, shallow. And a bit murky. And clogged up around the edges with a shocking amount of rubbish. The sort of mind you’d welcome on your panel or pub quiz team, but not on any project that required intellectual stamina, not anything that mattered, not your committee or inquiry, or, God forbid, your jury.’’

Ouch! That's me, pinned up like an exhibit in a display case.

Forty-nine years a journalist, met presidents and prime ministers, novelists and sports stars, business titans and rock ’n rollers. Even an astronaut. I’ve read newspapers, books, magazines, thousands of Net pages...

And my “boating lake’’ is shallower now than it was five decades ago.

Last week two ladies of senior years assured me that American astronauts had never landed on the Moon. The alleged landings were propaganda hoaxes, designed to awe the world in general, and Russia in particular.

“Some hoax,’’ I sneered. “Anyway, I met one of the original seven who had the right stuff to go into space, Virgil Grissom…’’

“An actor.’’

“Do you think the Americans would have forked out billions of dollars and involved a cast of thousands in a hoax?’’

“Yes.’’

My mind shuffled through the refuse at the edge of my “boating lake’’. The Gemini rocket…Atlas Agena engines…tracking station at Guymas, Mexico…CapCom…Apollo 13...

“What about the Moon rocks they brought back?’’

“You can pick up rocks anywhere.’’

“But these rocks are unique,’’ I blurted, wondering if this was true. “Nothing of the kind ever found before…’’

“Do you think they’ve found every kind of rock it’s possible to find on Earth?’’ one of the women witheringly demanded.

So much for local journalist meets famous astronaut. Change the subject.

In that column last Saturday Robert Crampton announced that he did not like libraries. “Half an hour in tome-town and I’m practically in a coma.’’

And I was almost buried for a working lifetime in a library. As soon as the law allowed them to unlock the gate of the local grammar school, I escaped into the free world.

I had to see a careers officer.

“Why do you want to be a journalist?’’ he asked with a withering look. (Oh dear. Two witherings in one column. Am I that kind of person?)

“Want to write,’’ I mumbled. “Meet people.’’

“No jobs going on the local weekly paper. But there is a job in the public library…’’

So I became a trainee librarian.

A lady arrived every Friday at five minutes to closing time, plonked romantic Barbara Cartlands on the counter with the demand “Four more like these love.’’

I gave her Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, in four volumes, and away she went.

A library was just another prison, with books instead of bars. Not a suitable place for practical jokers.

Eventually, after two years of wearing Air Force blue, I did get a job on weekly paper. And one of the first chaps I had to interview was the careers officer who had directed me into a book-lined jail.

“Great responsibility,’’ said I innocently. “Directing young people into jobs. Setting up their lives. Do you ever worry about steering them in the wrong direction?’’

Yes, he recognised me. Yes, he was embarrassed.

Such a rewarding job, journalism.

But now I think of might-have-beens. What elses, if not a journalist.

I know. A paramedic. Chasing out to the scene of a major disaster. Never knowing what the next day would bring.

But there you go. It must be in the blood. A genetic need for excitement and novelty.