Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Nowadays, the news is like the back-channel to everyone's brain, the soundtrack to our lives. If you're a newsjunkie, online kinda gal, you have a constant vague sense of breaking stories.

So yesterday I knew about the miners in West Virginia, and when I heard early this morning on the Today programme that after two days, twelve of them had been found alive, I was quietly jubilant and thankful that maybe this year would be a better year for the universe (hippy that I am).

So now it turns out it was a mistake. Forgive me, but how exactly do those kind of mistakes happen? Twelve families were jumping all over town, celebrating in the church, and ringing bells, and everything. And then it turns out there's some kind of "miscommunication". "Technical error." What, exactly?

You - they, whoever - just can't play with peoples' lives.

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