Does it have all the necessary requirements, is it well written, does it answer all the questions and does it tell me who, where, what, why and when - the famous five that any good article should answer?
And sometimes an article falls far short. It leaves you confused with questions not answered. Such was a Guardian article that I mentioned briefly yesterday.
It was about a new "attraction" being planned in France around D Day. It's the re=telling of the D Day story and will be sighted close to the landing beaches. The idea has split opinion.
So I looked at the story in two different ways. As a piece of written journalism did it inform and educate me on the controversy and did it help me to decide which side I was on? And the answer to both was a definite no. I was left confused and left with more questions than answers.
Sometimes there are reasons why a journalist leaves his/her audience confused. I think about crime where a reporter will know more than they report simply because by reporting certain facts they could prejudice an investigation.
I have been on both sides of this fence. As a reporter I often had off the record briefings with police and council officials where you would agree not to report certain facts which were given to you. Often these facts would be reported later when it was safe to do so. Then when I became a press officer for the police, I would often give journalists whom we trusted information and ask them not to use it at that point.
But to go back to the Normandy scenario. After reading the article I had no understanding about why this idea has met with so much opposition.
To put it simply the idea is to provide an immersive experience to help people understand what D Day was all about and its importance in the war effort. So far so good. So why is there opposition to something designed (allegedly) to enhance understanding?
Well there is obviously more to the opposition than meets the eye. It has been likened to a theme park but then there is nothing to back this up or support it. Then there are complaints that there will be an entry fee for this and that it will be cashing in on misery. I'm thinking that this doesn't add up either. Many museums charge entry fees. Certainly the one our party went to in Dunkirk in May did. And one of the people against this new facility is the curator at the Pegasus Bridge Museum which incidentally charges an entry fee (although I got in free as I will explain in a short while).
Other opposition factions say it will be out of keeping with the whole area where there are many free to see memorials. But the counter argument to this is simple: "Isn't anything that enhances knowledge good?"
Then there's the word immersive. All we are told is that there will be a multi media presentation including film and actors. But to make things interesting for a younger audience we have to use the latest technology. Isn't that the way to enhance education? But reading the article I didn't really understand the arguments for and against or what form the attraction (and that's probably the wrong word to use) will take. The article left me unable to formulate an educated opinion and left me with many questions unanswered.
Which takes me onto my visit to the D Day beaches. Actually I've been there twice. The first time was with a very knowledgeable guide who got quite emotional over the whole thing. I always remember his parting words: "Let's now do something that many couldn't do and that's go home." But it's the second visit that I'm going to write about and I hope you find it as amusing as I did.
You could argue that what I'm going to write about rather detracts from the gravity of D Day, but I don't think it does because those we were with actually took part in the landings. So here goes.
A friend of mine whom I worked with at the police was the nephew of one of the paratroopers who landed on the beaches on D-Day. This uncle was organising a trip to Normandy with his mates who all dropped out of planes onto the beaches.
They proved to be a loveable and irrasceble group of rogues and I just couldn't keep up with them. The younger people who accompanied them (i.e us) were all given a specific para to look after and that proved impossible.
My old para was Pete who looked just like Uncle Albert in Only Fools and Horses. He had a long white beard. Pete was on numerous tablets for angina, diabetes and much more. By all accounts he had so many tablets that he should have rattled. He wasn't supposed to drink alcohol but guess what - he drank like a fish.
So we took the ferry across the channel. There was quite a group of these paras and they were absolutely uncontrollable. Me and my mate left them to it and went off to the restaurant. As soon as they got onto the boat they started on pints of beer. But that wasn't a problem. What they mixed with it was. They had a huge quantity of hooch (illegal home brewed alcohol) which they drank as chasers with the beer. They kept this liquid in Fairy Liquid bottles on the grounds that nobody would know what they were drinking.
Now do tell me how pouring strong home brewed whisky into a glass from a Fairy Liquid bottle isn't suspicious or have I been missing out all my life by thinking that it's not a unusual thing to do? They kept the "Fairy Liquid" under the table and vaguely out of sight.
Then we were given tickets to what was down as a curry night at a local hall. Yes there was curry, but there was enough alcohol to swim in and under the table were Fairy Liquid bottles, this time containing Drambuie. By the end of the meal most of the paras were "two sheets to the wind." But then they found there was a bar opposite and several of them went over for what they referred to as "a little drink." That was after already having "a big drink."
Next thing we know Pete has passed out and we had to virtually drag him back to the hotel where we were staying. He managed to come round just in time to realise the bar was still open but we managed to drag him to his room.
Next morning he was as bright as a button eating a full breakfast. "I had a good time last night even if my family told me not to drink," he proclaimed. The next night he was back on the juice again.
As for the others, well their view was "All those years ago we jumped out of planes into goodness knows what. We knew some of us wouldn't survive so now every day is a bonus and we no longer have an inhibitions." So they were determined to have a bloody good time.
Poor old Peter took some ribbing though. He had delayed dropping out of his plane, had found land about 10 miles away and got completely lost in some woodland. I assume he eventually caught up with the others.
When we got to the Pegasus Bridge museum, Uncle Sid strode in and asked to see the manager. "Without us you wouldn't be here so we aren't paying," he said. I think the manager let us all in out of fear rather than history. On that trip Uncle Sid strode into a local infants school and practically demanded to talk to the children about the war. I wasn't there but I have no idea whether he spoke in French or English. But he did get to speak to the youngsters.
The visit to the Pegasus Bridge Museum proved a very poignant one for my friend and colleague. I caught him wiping away a tear as he looked at an RAF photograph:
"That's my dad on there. I have never seen a picture of him in uniform before," he said.
They were all just as bad on the return ferry -ogling girls, making suggestive remarks and generally being uproarious.
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I always think it so sad that the BBC recorded over so many tapes. There are only a handful of University Challenge early shows with Bambi Gascoigne available. So many other programmes were wiped and recorded over. What a treasure trove those original tapes would have made, although there is some suggestion that if everything is preserved and easily accessible it takes away the excitement of finding lost episodes etc.
* * *
One of my favourite bands of the 1970s were Curved Air. I saw them live many years ago and was looking forward to hearing them again in Norwich in a few days time. Unfortunately that show has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales and that is quite sad.