Suddenly, there I was on the radio!

It's true!

We set off on our Saturday rounds of dropping son & heir at the local shops, visiting Sainsbury's for a few bits we'd forgotten to buy and back home again.

Having got back home, I opened up my laptop, got Rhubarb & Ginger upon screen, Twitter in the next window, Gmail in the next window and Facebook in the last window (I'm nothing if not a creature of habit) and went back to Twitter to sort out some thank you posts for various "follow Friday" wishes.  As I was going through the messages, out popped one from @nickcoffer.  Now Nick has a blog and a radio show on BBC Three Counties Radio during the weekday afternoons and a Saturday show, called "Weekend Kitchen".  He's also written a recipe book entitled "My Daddy Cooks", which details family recipes that you can cook with a young'un alongside - a copy of which I recently won as the prize for Ren Behan's "Food on Fridays" feature.

In his message, he said " hi Jenny, would you be around for a quick phone interview today at 13.15 for my radio show's food site of the week slot?".  Erm .. ~blink~ .. did I read that right?  So I read it again - and squealed "like a Tyrannosaurus Rex was eating my toes" (to quote hubby, who has a vivid imagination).

Cor, would I?  You bet I would!  Only - by this time - there was just an hour and quarter to go.  Oh dear, had I left it too late to contact him back?  So I dashed off a "you betcha" message (which included my telephone number) and crossed my fingers.

This was me, for a lot of the time!

Then I remembered my "episode" (as the doctors called it) some years back which turned out to be something rather closer to a stroke and which left me almost devoid of vocabulary.  I could remember the ands, ifs and buts, but anything outside of ordinary speech was a sore trial.  I had lost a significant degree of short term memory - I was sure the Prime Minister was Tony Blair, for instance.  It has taken me a couple of years and consistent work to get back to where I am now - which is fine where the written word is concerned, but not so good with spoken.  For instance, I was typing the above and ground to a halt with the word "vocabulary".  I couldn't remember it and the only word my brain was sending out was "parallellogram" - which isn't anything like it.  I have various tricks and trails that I send my brain along when this happens, to grasp at the lost word and very often I can find it.  However, sometimes it just evades me and I have to go to Google and search for it in random sentences that might use it.  I got "vocabulary" by eventually imagining myself reacting to someone who swears a lot - in which case I'd habitually say "hmmn, he can't have a great vocabulary if he's resorting to swearing".  Bingo!  Vocabulary - got it.

None of which would work well on radio!  *gulp*

Well, I was committed by then and could just console myself with the fact that a) the interview would be short and b) I knew Rhubarb & Ginger inside out (or so I thought).

The phone rang and it was Nick's Producer (so sorry, I've forgotten her name!) to check out whether I was okay for the interview etc etc.  She said she'd ring back when it was time to go on air.

Why, I do believe that's Jenny Eatwell!

The phone rang again and after a short moment or two, I could hear the radio show going on - and then it was my interview.  Now listening to it after the event, I had no idea at the time, how many times I said "err" or "umm".  Oh my god - if I'd have cut out all the erring and umming, I could have said a lot more!  However, it's the erring and umming that fill in the gaps when my brain is fishing around for the proper words to answer the question!  To be honest, I don't think I did too badly.  I didn't grind to a halt over any content on Rhubarb & Ginger - just the URL!  I couldn't remember if I had to say http:// or www!

Nick was very easy to talk to - I had resolved that I would treat it just like speaking to someone for the first time on the telephone and studiously forget about the radio audience behind the programme.  I don't think I did Rhubarb & Ginger justice at all - I could have been so much more coherent about it.  However, all things taken in to consideration - it could have been so much worse!  lol

If you want to have a listen, it is available on the IPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/p00t232y/

If you don't want to listen to the whole show (it's a goodie, so if you've got time, do!) you'll need to scroll through to 1 hour 19mins to find the interview.  It is probably only available up until the end of this week (23 June 2012), but I'm hoping to get a recording of it that I'll be able to post up for perpetuity.

My gosh, but what an excitement it all was!  My thanks go out to Nick Coffer and his team - and my apologies for not being more coherent!

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