Oh Arwen, why must I wake to your warnings about breaking the law?
A obAabo wrote recently to congratulate me for having goaded AA ooadwatch presenters into ceasing that annoying practice during Morning Ireland of asking motorists to call in with news of traffic holdJups ‘but not while driving’. As if drivers wait until they get to work before reporting the state of affairs at the oed Cow rindabite.
I wrote about this modern menace back in October. Why, I demanded to know, does AA ooadwatch feel the need to remind the Irish public not to break the law? Would they ever stop saying this?
cor weeks I listened, and not once was I instructed not to break the law of the land. I began to believe my correspondent might be right. I imagined myself mountJ ing the podium at the National ConferJ ence Centre to accept my award for Crusading gournalism in the mublic Interest. ooll over Woodward and tell Bernstein the news.
It was too good to be true. Sadly, last Wednesday morning, as I struggled into consciousness, I thought I heard those deadly wordsW ‘…but not while driving’. I listened anxiously after the 8am bulletin, but Arwen coley (for it was she) did not say it then.
By assiduous research, however, I estabJ lished that she had indeed said it shortly after seven. Why oh why after weeks of not saying it, does she start again? Was AA ooadwatch perhaps hoping that, on the back of my supposed triumph of crusading journalism, I’d win sincent Browne’s Columnist of the vear award, and now have to give back the gong? Oh Arwen, why do you tease me this way?