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standing, but I just didn’t have the energy. Trying to crack Broadcasting House could take years, and what would I be doing in the meantime? The prospect of more local radio, decades of it, stretched out before me like a desolate plain, too depressing to contemplate.
    I was a desperate journeyman, looking for a seismic shift, something to break up the long, unwanted trek. I needed a fault line to open up, something that would reveal a deeper, moreprecious route. Something quicker, riskier and with greater reward.
    I wasn’t about to leave the BBC altogether – that was my safety line. A brief descent was all that was required, then I’d haul myself back up to the surface, hopefully in a new and magical land.
    As long as the ground didn’t swallow me whole, I’d be just fine.

*   
Harrison died from lung cancer five months later.

Home Fires
    Telling your family you’ve volunteered to go to Afghanistan is never an easy thing. Why would anybody in their right mind want to go there? Even if you don’t mention the war, it’s a tough sell. It’s the poorest country in Asia, it generates most of the planet’s heroin and it’s stupidly hot. Throw in the firefights, the IEDs and the suicide bombers, and you’ve got that most difficult of pitches: “Hell on Earth”.
    With no wife or girlfriend to speak of – my love life to that point had been a series of mildly amusing disasters, worthy of their own comic novella – I only had to worry about breaking the news to my parents. I did also have a brother and sister, but they were much less of a concern: both Will and Nicky took after our father’s side of the family, being typically English and phlegmatic about things like love and war. Unlike myself, they shared none of our mother’s Germanic fondness for tearful sentimentality.
    I told my parents on a frosty evening just a few days before Christmas, stopping by on my way home from work. My mother was standing by the fire in the lounge when I broke the news, while my father was in his favourite chair, reading his newspaper.
    “I’ve got something important to tell you,” I said.
    I wasn’t normally given to statements like this. Already my mother looked worried. My father put his paper down.
    “I’m going to Afghanistan.”
    My mother’s face dropped, and she started to cry.
    Shit .
    What was I doing, putting her through this? She didn’t deserve this. She’d brought me into this world, loved me and looked after me. Now I was dropping this on her.
    “How long for?” she said eventually.
    “Four months.”
    More tears. I think that for a second she’d been hoping it might have been some short journalistic assignment, lasting just a few days or weeks. The fact was, it could’ve been worse – it could’ve been six months. I’d requested a shorter tour, and luckily I’d got it.
    “Are they making you go?” asked my father. He wasn’t crying, but he did have his “serious” face on, eyeing me carefully over the top of his reading glasses.
    “They asked me if I wanted to go, and I said I did.” This was sort of true, insofar as the MOG was always asking for volunteers. “I think it’ll be good for me.”
    “What will you be doing?” my mother asked.
    “I’ll be running a camera team.” Already I was omitting the word “combat”. “There’ll be myself, a cameraman and a photographer.”
    “Will it be dangerous?”
    I considered telling an outright lie to this question, claiming my job was entirely office-bound, but I wasn’t sure it would wash. My mother was pretty good at detecting bullshit; if she thought I was trying to protect her from the truth, it could make things even worse.
    “It shouldn’t be too bad,” I said. “We might have to go out on the odd patrol.”
    She looked unconvinced, her cheeks still wet with tears. I gave her a hug.
    “It’s going to be OK,” I said. “If it was that dangerous, I wouldn’t be doing it.”
    To be honest, I had no idea how dangerous it