This is one of the more spontaneous diary creations that I can recall and it concerns today’s visit to a local radio station, should I say a community radio station, to get some training about how to run shows and do interviews.

I set off around 8:30 am to go the 10 miles to the destination and on the way I was greeted by banks of fog followed by a clear skies followed by more fog which caused me to slow down considerably. The problem with fog is that you can see absolutely nothing 20 yards from you so if someone is speeding going the other way and taking liberties you wouldn’t stand a chance, but fortunately the road I was going on was populated  by well behaved drivers.

After finding somewhere to park for the day I attended a local French restaurant on the top of Saint Catherine’s Hill – ‘Bistro Latte’ – where upon I had the obligatory latte and two croissants. I repaired to the Town Hall training venue at 10 am prompt to be joined by four other people most of whom were interested in music and how they could promulgate interest in music outside their immediate environment. NB  meaning of promulgate, for those not familiar with the English language, ‘promulgate’ means to promote or make widely known an ideal or cause.It comes from the Latin ‘promulgat— exposed to public view.

During the introductions I seemed to be on my own as the only person mainly interested in the build up of a community. In my introduction to the others I said that it was unacceptable to me to know that there are people sitting on their own, unable or afraid of making the normal social contacts that are necessary for a full life. We are hard wired to be ‘members one of another’ as it says in the New Testament. No, I’m not Bible thumping, I’m just expressing a point of profound psychology which has been iterated over to thousand years ago and which is still as relevant today as it was then.

There are certain generic traps in being a trainer. Because the landscape is thoroughly understood by you you think people can absorb information at a faster rate than they actually can.

We were introduced to the technicalities of local broadcasting including a sequence of events that had to happen in terms of pressing buttons, saving files, etc but I found that I was so unfamiliar with this way of thinking that I almost switched off and gave up.

I confided in my working colleague to say that it was not enough to be shown something. I had to be talked through a process with the demonstrator at hand followed by my own attempts again under guidance. I would be afraid of doing something on my own due to lack of confidence and experience for fear of doing damage that could not be reversed.

Fortunately, a colleague with whom I was working was more familiar with the technicalities of recording studios so he took the lead. However there was a problem in that the assistant of the trainer who was expected to turn up did not show so the trainer had to simultaneously manage two groups at once which meant that for a time we were expected to figure it out for ourselves.

We now have the very interesting term parthenocarpy which is the process of producing fruit without fertilization, resulting in a seedless fruit. The term is used in botany and horticulture, and can be induced naturally or artificially.

All this was sparked off because my working colleague and I were trying to figure out how to fill in a talk as part of our demonstration 10 minute interviewing session and my colleague said ‘why don’t I talk about bananas?

My mind was immediately kickstarted into asking more questions for example, ‘is banana a fruit?

The same thing happened when the topic of trust came up; I wondered what the difference was between mistrust, and distrust. It appears that mistrust is more temporary and based on few or no items of information but distrust is based on a longer term impression of people through objective things they have done or said, or not done and said.

Trust is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something and reminds us that relations have to be built on trust. This conversation played to my desire to understand the origin of words and basically to keep the English language alive. The Latin word fides means “confidence”, “courage”, “security”, and “pledge” or “guarantee”. The verb fidere is the origin of both fides and fiducia. Other English words that come from the Latin root fid include “confident”, “fidelity”, and “perfidy”. 

Anyway, I interrupt myself. I was speaking about the trainer. Apparently he was supposed to have had an assistant to spread the load of work because there were two groups and obviously he could not be simultaneously training two groups so we were left on our own for most of the time but in the end we got the idea and a promise was made to us that future one-to-one support would be offered if the need arose.

Basically the offer is that for this particular radio station we can make any reasonable suggestion and we can have our time on the air.

Overall I found the six hours we spent together partly frustrating but partly insightful to see what could be possible. We parted on amicable terms and I was left to wonder what I could contribute to society by running a phone-in forum or ZOOM-like discussion on social matters.

I saw this sign on my way to the event. It brings back memories of time of yore.