Professional nosey parker

As a journalist I regularly get to poke my nose into other people’s business. Most of the time that business is related to their work or their area of expertise. For example, I’ll ask an air force pilot what it feels like to fly through the eye of a hurricane or I’ll find out why a professor has built a contraption to make people feel sick.

Sometimes though, I have to get personal and even though I’ve had plenty of practice and I’ve never been involved in any type of salacious snooping, it can sometimes seem a bit intrusive.

I’ve recently been working on a magazine story about scleroderma, a little-known disease that affects about 500 people in BC. I interviewed the doctor who heads up the clinic at St Paul’s hospital in Vancouver but I knew that a list of grim symptoms and talk of drug regimes wasn’t going to make an interesting read.

I had a thousand words to craft and I needed a sufferer with an interesting tale to tell. A willing victim was lined up and to my relief I didn’t have to prod and probe too much to get almost two decades worth of her personal and medical history. She was a great interviewee – I would ask a question and she would talk for a few minutes giving lots of facts and anecdotes. I learned all sorts of stuff about her life that I didn’t need to know but her openness gave my article heart. Her story is the thing that will engage the reader but I’ll get the credit with the byline.

Part of the reason for the article was to raise the profile of the disease but also raise money for research so there had to be a certain amount of tugging on the heartstrings. However, having spent time with the woman and listened to how she coped with her various ailments, I didn’t want to portray her as some enfeebled victim who was at the mercy of readers’ generosity. So I added an extra paragraph about how pro-active she was in local support groups and research programs. I’m pretty sure it will get cut as it’s not really pertinent to the story but I feel a little easing of my conscience.

Last year I wrote an article on dog theft and had to interview a couple of distraught dog owners. One was reluctant to talk so I really had to drag a few comments out of her. The other willingly sobbed down the phone about her “missing baby” while I sat there taking notes thinking this is gonna make great copy.

When I was a trainee reporter in Winchester in the UK, I used to have to go and do “death knocks”. Basically if somebody died and there was a good story in it, I had to go and knock on the door of the family and get a photo and a few quotes if possible. It was even better if I got their before the rival newspapers.

I despised doing it, but the thing that surprises me to this day, is that some people don’t mind the intrusion and were more than happy to talk about the person who had just died. Unfortunately, you never knew who was going to open up and who was going to slam the door in your face.

My first death knock involved a 6-year-old girl killed in a car accident. I reluctantly went to the parents’ house but no one was answering. As I walked away from the house the parents arrived and when I explained who I was, the grieving mother started wailing and the father started to shout. I apologised and left pretty pronto feeling like a real shit.

The next day, the senior editor insisted I go back and ask again as people sometimes change their mind. Being a wuss, or having a little bit of decency depending on your point of view, I couldn’t bring myself to go and knock on the door so I left a note with a business card. The next day I had an angry relative on the phone telling me to back off. After that I was under no more pressure to get a picture of that particular girl but if one had appeared in a rival newspaper I would have been asked to explain myself.

On another occasion, I rolled up a the house of a teenager who had been killed in a motorcycle accident. His parents welcomed me inside, got out the photo album and the memories started flowing. They were one of those families who wanted the world to know how great their son was and was glad someone was taking an interest. I still felt a bit bad intruding on their grief but I have to say, it made a nice story.

However worthy their intentions, all journalists are involved in some form of exploitation – and I’m not talking about the sort that is discussed in a J-school ethics class. You are constantly on the hunt for stories and contacts that will get you the next front page, career kudos or commission. It’s an unspoken rule that you ask people for information so you can earn your living. “Let me expose your pain or write about a dirty secret so I can steal a little bit of your glory.

Admittedly some exploit their own lives to make a living and with this blog, I’m exploiting myself but at least we have some control on the final result and I have no one to blame but myself.
YB

Where to call home

One of the golden rules of moving abroad is to stick it out for at least two years. With no friends or family for back-up, financial insecurity and unfamiliar surroundings, it’s easy to get homesick and run back to what you know.

One of my neighbours was a Canadian war bride and when she arrived from London 60-odd years ago she had no clue whether she would even see her family again. She had to rely on letters that took an age to arrive and like most other immigrants at the time there was no turning back so she just had to make it work.

These days if you’ve got the money to get over here and you are not bothered about swallowing your pride, you can book a flight back home easily and sleep in someone’s spare room until you sort yourself out. You only have to spend five minutes on an ex-pat message board to see how many disillusioned people slink back home.

You can quickly forget all the reasons why you decided to make the move and start romanticising the “old country” while still trying to get to grips with the oddities and burearcracy of your newly chosen home. I arrived in the summer of 2005 and was too busy enjoying all the kayaking, biking, hiking etc to think much about what I’d left behind. Everything was new and exciting and there were still plenty of savings to burn through so it was a bit like being on an extended holiday.

The melancholy set in with the rain and diminishing bank account. I missed friends and family and the old certainties about my career and general status in life. Not being able to go out for an impromptu coffee or hang out at the weekend made me feel a bit lonely and even more reliant on my partner for entertainment and companionship. And not having anyone to visit over Christmas was also quite weird.

But email, MSN and Skype has been great for staying in touch with people. Sending off regular photos and even an audio file of my awful rendition of O Canada on Canada Day has kept me on the radar and kept old friends entertained. Okay, so the nature of the relationship has changed and I had to miss a good friend’s wedding, but we can still be a part of each other’s lives. And if you’ve spent 10 or even 20 years maintaining a friendship, it’s hard just to drop it because you know longer share the same area code.

I have all my favourite news websites bookmarked, so I have no trouble keeping up with what’s going on in the UK and can still have the same old conversations about current affairs and pop culture. The one bad thing about having such easy access to Britsh media is that I know more about what’s going on in the UK than over here so sometimes don’t feel truly engaged with some aspects of life here.

We had a bit of a Brit invasion over the summer and I was a little worried that when we waved the last visitors through the YVR departure gate, that we’d want to jump on the plane with them. But having visitors made us appreciate our new lives even more and now I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live in the UK again.

I’ve been here 18 months now and I’m still not totally in my comfort zone. But I’ve had18 months to start developing a life here and connections with new people and places so there is far less hankering for the good old days when life was easy and familiar. I’ve stopped obsessing about the things I can’t have or do anymore and just enjoy the stuff I can do instead. It’s about accepting the fact that the grass is just a different shade of green on the other side.

Most importantly, I’ve made a mental shift. When I think of home, I think of where I am rather than where I used to be.

YB

Greetings from the West Coast

If my life were like the pages of a women’s magazine, today would herald a new year AND a new me. But I won’t start 2007 by slinging off my vices as I don’t have a whole lot of interesting ones to refrain from. No, my life in 2007 will be radically different, not because I’m about to change my ways but because I’m about to reproduce.

In July 2005 I emigrated from London to Vancouver. Four months later, I’d moved into a house in North Vancouver. Now I’m preparing to fill that house with the smell of poo, shrieking and chaos.

I’m under no illusions. I’ve spent the last 12 years watching friends drop their own sprogs and I have a memory deposit box in my brain overflowing with stories of agonizing birth dramas, nappy mishaps, sleep deprived hysteria and the general zombified gruesomeness that early parenthood entails. Which is why I’ve waited until the age of 40 to get going on my genetic heritage.

A bit cavalier to leave it this late I know but my mother had her fourth child at 38 and my overweight, KFC munching sister also had an accident at the age of 38 so I figured my ovaries were good til then. Waiting for the glacial Canadian immigration service held things up for a few more years but I have ownership of a super-virile English gent and my biological clockwork seems to be powered by long-life batteries, so didn’t have to resort to desperate measures.

So, I’ll be writing about impending motherhood, making a life as a new immigrant in Canada, reminiscences of the UK and other odds and ends of life that grab my attention from the wonderful wilds of Vancouver’s North Shore.

Welcome to my blog

YB