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With a reporting mock and shorthand exam out of the way – anyone know an outline for too bloody quick? – and a week of mocks on the horizon, this was a slightly different week than the ones we have become used to, a change of tack and a blessed relief to boot.
The machine-gun waves of shorthand passages at 100wpm relented just a tad and the focus has been more on consolidating what we know rather than cramming any more into our distended brains.
The highlight were two trips we had the opportunity to go on – not ‘jollies’ for knackered trainee journalists, but a reminder of why we’re doing this intense course in the first place.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sense of horror, frustration and inspiration that washed over me at the 7/7 Bombings inquest. We saw the testimonies of two people who were on the Circle Line train in which seven people died just outside Edgware Road.
Peter Zimonjic was one of the heroes who broke into the afflicted carriage and tended the injured for 45 minutes while the emergency services made their way to them.
His vivid story was horrendous but also exhibited the generosity and bravery of normal members of the public, who rallied round each other in literally hellish circumstances.
Ray Whitehurst, the train’s driver, was equally enlightening and chillingly conveyed his exchanges with control rooms above him who could not accept the carnage which had just unfolded.
The failings, the deaths, the mutilated flesh and steel. In our privileged positions as journalists, we have an opportunity and duty to tell people’s stories and fight for them to never be repeated.
Mayor’s Questions at the London Assembly was a chance to see Boris Johnson use every trick in the book – playing to the audience principle among them – to deflect the barbed questions of one side of the room and a few from his so-called allies on the other.
Love him or loathe him, and I would consider myself as having greater sympathy with the latter, you have to be impressed with Bojo’s way with words and showmanship, even if a man cannot possibly become editor of the Spectator and Mayor of London while being half as bungling as he likes people to think he is.
Three hours is a little too much though, truth be told.
Will O'Doherty
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