Echo... echo...

Highlight of the day was a visit to the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo building where I met a lovely features writer, Dawn Collinson, pictured here with yours truly. I didn't clone out the plant emerging from her head, as it does the soul good to see that a staff photographer on a daily paper can still make that schoolboy error... It was my camera but I thought I'd leave it to the experts today.

By way of explanation: just before my recent 1000th blip, Ryan, the comms person at Blip Central, contacted me to see if I would like the local media to cover my story of using Blip and taking 1000 pictures. I was a bit reluctant and put the idea aside for a while, until I saw that Lawrie had done the same for his 1000th with the Yorkshire Post, although his story is much more interesting than mine. I sent the requested information about my experience and rationale for blipping, and was contacted two days ago by this lady who wanted to interview me. I have been interviewed by a Liverpool Echo reporter before, although it was over 21 years ago and from a hospital bed, having just given birth to #2 daughter, the first baby of the 90s born in Merseyside (and one of 10 born in the first minute of 1990 in the UK). This was much scarier as I get a bit fuddled on the phone these days so opted for a meeting in person at the newspaper offices.

I was quite confident of getting there on the train, as it's a familiar journey made every day when I was working in the same street, but forgot that jogging up 2 flights of steep steps and an escalator when you're young(er) and fit and trying to get to work on time is a bit different with a crutch, a heavy camera and wearing a long skirt - duh, didn't think THAT through...

The interview is a bit of a blur really, my memory still being poor, and I've no idea what I rabbited on about, although I do remember a feeling of being put at ease and talking to a kind and sympathetic listener. I recall describing my spoken vocabulary loss as being like having a dictionary with random pages ripped out. I still have long and complex words but strangely a lot of simple ones elude me; maybe for the sake of flow, when I reach a blank I should just insert a random word - banana maybe - and keep going. Written language is fine; it's only the spoken version I have trouble with.

Now I have a week to wait to see my story in print - hope I don't come over as a daft blip-obsessive old bat. Actually I've used a lot of Dawn's entertaining pieces in my editing the recordings for the Liverpool Talking Newspaper for the blind in the past, so I'm sure I'm in good hands.

I forgot to tell her about Africa, but for the record it's dark green today.