Richard says Hello! Last Sunday we crowned the May Queen in the Vicarage Garden. Her Majesty and her attendants were shivering with cold as the rest of us sat in the marquee in jumpers rubbing our hands together to keep warm and fortifying ourselves with kilos of Coronation Chicken (going to be eating a lot more of that this year). The horse chestnuts were out and proud, the bloom was on the may, but the weather was revisiting March. Weird. Even weirder was the swiftness of the change which came the next day. In twenty four hours we went from the end of winter to high summer, twenty seven degrees, lovely on a day off but not an unalloyed joy when your life requires the wearing of a lot of black (ask any Greek widow).
This stop/start weather seems to have shaken up the goddess Flora, who's sprinted through the spring and today I look out of my window into a lane suddenly frothy with Queen Anne's Lace (or keck as it is unromantically called round here) and patched with buttercups. Summer has arrived. Last night, about half past eight, I was driving home and drove through the village I grew up in. A big red sun was slowly slipping behind a line of trees in thick leaf bordering a field of brilliant yellow rape, softened by heat haze, and giving onto a field full of ewes and lambs. Oddly, considering how quickly the weather has changed in the past week, it felt timeless, a sort of optical or perceptual illusion of changelessness ushered in by an accelerated process of change. I had to stop to enjoy it and was late home.
Our timings will be much more orderly on the programme on Saturday, they'll have to be - there's so much going on.
Hello from Sian. Today, I turned to a colleague and said: don't ever let me moan about my job again. I was in a helicopter at the time, squealing like a schoolgirl on a roller-coaster. I'm sworn to secrecy, so, rather annoyingly, like said schoolgirl being told about a surprise, I'm bursting to tell you about it and can't. Until next week.
I really won't get another week like this. Wednesday, I was in the House of Commons, with Olympic athletes, MPs and Peers, listening to a presentation by the DG on what the BBC has in store for 2012. The night before, I was dining with Royalty. One place setting away from Princess Anne, in the grandeur of the State Rooms of St James's Palace. I know. Told you it was bonkers. I wish my Mum was still alive. She would have loved telling her tennis chums about this.
Anyway, the Princess Royal is patron of a charity that's merged with one that I'm patron of. It's for people with late onset hearing loss, called Hearing Link and it was the official launch. So I got a call asking whether I'd do an after dinner speech. I was terrified. I'd read the protocol notes: "Address her as Your Royal Highness first, then Ma'am to rhyme with Jam, not Smarm. Do a small curtsey, not a big stage one. Speak when spoken to".
I was second in the presentation line-up and when Princess Anne came towards me, all I could think about was, "Small bob and say nothing". I'm introduced to her: "And this is one of our Patrons, Sian Williams, from the BBC, Ma'am" "Ah, thank you for coming" she said. I stuck out my hand for her to shake - what was I thinking? And barked "It's a joy to be here! A complete joy!" Shush, Sian, my internal voice is saying. Stop being such a Commoner.
Then when we're sitting near her at dinner, she gives me her opinion on BBC News and I'm off, doing the very thing I shouldn't and interviewing her. Impudent little plebeian that I am. Of course, and I'm really not being sycophantic here, she's delightful company, funny and clever. At one point, she was concerned that I was holding my script right at the very extremity of my arm. "Might you need glasses?" she said "Or at least a bigger font?"
Anyway, we have broadcasting royalty with us in the Saturday Live studio this week. Who coined the phrase "Here's your starter for ten"? He was the host of a popular quiz show for 25 years, before Jeremy Paxman took over. It's Bamber Gascoigne, of course. Bamber (if you were wondering, name is of German origin, meaning tree trunk) is a judge on the R4 show The New Elizabethans. Some choices on that show were controversial, some omissions more so. It set us thinking about fictional New Elizabethans: people like James Bond, perhaps, Tracey Beaker, Basil Fawlty, Doctor Who. Who would you nominate? Let us know saturdaylive@bbc.co.uk
High on our list was Paddington Bear whose creator Michael Bond told us about his lost love last week, how did Mrs Bond respond? We'll ask her. No more marmalade sandwiches for him, though. Your memories too, of lost loves, please.
I'm very much looking forward to hearing from John McCarthy. He's returned to Lebanon, more than twenty years after he was held in Beirut as a hostage, for more than a thousand days. Imagine. Also in the programme, someone who experienced a different kind of hell - the Angel of Mostar, Sally Becker, who rescued children from the Bosnian war two decades ago. She's been reunited with a baby she took to safety, who's now an adult and contacted her via the social networking site, Facebook.
Plus, a 16 year old British boy who's dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet School, a pean of praise to the Chopper bike and - seconds out - the Inheritance Tracks of the legendary American boxer, Sugar Ray Leonard. All in all, we hope it's a knockout. Saturday Live, 9am.
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