Lord Bracknell
On fire
I'm waiting for some news. The phone rings. It's Paul Samrah, who is in the Club Office. No-one down there can get on to NSC.
We talk for about 30 seconds before the mobile phone signal fades away.
Then the postman turns up. With a large brown envelope from the ODPM. [Note to OTLW - it's BROWN, you clown!!!]
Paul Samrah phones again. I ask him whether the Club Office has the letter. "No", he says, "Martin Perry isn't in, he's probably at DMH".
I open the brown envelope. Paul tells me that Southern Counties Radio have just said the decision is NO. Amongst all the stuff in the brown envelope (Collyer's Report, copies of 16 other letters, mostly from Falmer residents, and a final representation from the Club) I find the letter and read it to Paul Samrah - slowly, so that he can repeat what he's hearing to the people around him.
He gets interrupted by a message from Southern Counties Radio, inviting him to comment on the NO decision.
We eventually get to go through the ODPM letter, with growing confidence that the terms of reference for the re-opened Public Inquiry mean that there is no chance that we won't get Falmer.
Phone goes dead again.
I check NSC - completely unavailable.
Try, try and try again. Eventually I get on to find it's all doom and gloom. Thank you SCR.
And then it takes ten more minutes to post my version of the story on the board.
What really impresses me about the last week is that practically nothing has leaked out from the briefing meeting that Dick Knight and Martin Perry gave to Falmer For All last Thursday.
We talk for about 30 seconds before the mobile phone signal fades away.
Then the postman turns up. With a large brown envelope from the ODPM. [Note to OTLW - it's BROWN, you clown!!!]
Paul Samrah phones again. I ask him whether the Club Office has the letter. "No", he says, "Martin Perry isn't in, he's probably at DMH".
I open the brown envelope. Paul tells me that Southern Counties Radio have just said the decision is NO. Amongst all the stuff in the brown envelope (Collyer's Report, copies of 16 other letters, mostly from Falmer residents, and a final representation from the Club) I find the letter and read it to Paul Samrah - slowly, so that he can repeat what he's hearing to the people around him.
He gets interrupted by a message from Southern Counties Radio, inviting him to comment on the NO decision.
We eventually get to go through the ODPM letter, with growing confidence that the terms of reference for the re-opened Public Inquiry mean that there is no chance that we won't get Falmer.
Phone goes dead again.
I check NSC - completely unavailable.
Try, try and try again. Eventually I get on to find it's all doom and gloom. Thank you SCR.
And then it takes ten more minutes to post my version of the story on the board.
What really impresses me about the last week is that practically nothing has leaked out from the briefing meeting that Dick Knight and Martin Perry gave to Falmer For All last Thursday.