The Day I Became A Journalist
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Dear Douglas Adams,
you won't remember me, because I was just a voice from the audience, but I remember you. I want to thank you for being an unwitting part of one of the strangest, yet enjoyable evenings of my life.
It was the 4th April 2000 (I remember) and you were presenting h2g2 to fans and the German media at the Berlin Kesselhaus, a converted brewery. (Nobody can say you couldn't organise a p**s-up at a brewery!) I went along to see you in the flesh, to see what a person who writes a legendary five-part trilogy looks like. As I sat near the front, a young German sat next to me and began studying some faxed articles about you. I could not help but take subtly surreptitious sideways glances to read them, and the journalist could not help but notice this. He saved my straining eyes by asking me if I wanted to read them. Smiling gratefully, I accepted and had a ganders at what they were saying.
"So, are you a fan?" the journalist asked conversationally.
"Oh, no," I replied. "I don't like to describe myself as a fan. When I hear that word I think of obsessed stalkers with dubious personal hygiene. I would describe myself as a wannabe science fiction author who was heavily influenced by Mr. Adams' books as a young teenager."
"I like to read science fiction myself," the journalist, Holger Schlösser, nodded. We began to talk about science fiction, the Internet and h2g2, of which I was already familiar.
"I hear he's signing books afterwards," Holger said after a while.
"Oh good, I brought one just in case," I smiled. I also had this plan, which I didn't mention to Holger, where I would casually enquire as you signed my book, whether you would be interested in a swift pint afterwards, a little chat as two Englishmen in Berlin. I felt curiously privileged to be English and here to see you, among all these Germans.
"I'm hoping he might come out for a pint afterwards," Holger added. It was then that I realised that every single person in that hall was there with the specific intention of asking you out to a pint afterwards. It turned out that Holger was also there to offer you $2000 to write an article for his magazine, Online Today. He understood that I hoped to chat to you, so he gamely offered to pass me off as a junior hack/translator.
At that moment, a German chap did a quick introduction, the hall darkened, the Toccata began to play and eventually you bounded onstage and paced up and down and posed for a couple of photos, illuminated by bright flashes. Hush descended and you began to talk about that time you, in a classically British way, brusquely shared a packet of biscuits with an anonymous man on Cambridge railway station. As you prepared to catch your train, you lifted your newspaper and discovered your packet of biscuits lying there, untouched. You actually wrote it into THHGTTG as Arthur Dent's story to chat-up Fenchurch.
You outlined your vision of the future and the work you were doing with h2g2, a lot of which I agreed with wholeheartedly. You
then concluded your talk and disappeared rather disappointingly backstage. Holger and I hung around with a lot of other milling Germans and met your PR manageress. Holger made his offer, which she promised to communicate, but it was clear that you were not signing books or going for a pint with anybody. We retreated to a nearby biergarten to lick our wounds.
As we supped our pints, Holger decided to check his e-mail. I found the next fifteen minutes quite amusing, because we proceeded to put into practice some of what you had been saying in the past hour. Using the infra-red link between his Ericsson mobile and his Compaq PDA, he was able to check his e-mail and then we browsed the web. We visited the h2g2 WAP site, which I had recently demonstrated in a presentation on the Wireless Application Protocol for a communications course at the Technische Universität Berlin. I grinned and said, "this is the future."
"Do you want to be a journalist?" Holger asked. I nodded. "I can help you. If you think of something to write, send it to me and I can show it to my editor at Tagesspiegel. All you have to do is find something on technology to write about. You can find something in England... You are ahead of us in technology, aren't you?" I nodded, unable to find the words to express myself. I could not believe that I was being offered such a chance!
After another pint, Holger looked at his watch. "I think I will skip the second presentation and go home."
"A second presentation?" I gaped, looking dumbfounded.
"Yes, and he's doing the book-signing afterwards," Holger explained. A look of amusement flickered across his face and he pushed his press pass towards me. "Hey, how about doing your first assignment as a journalist? What is your name?"
"Huh?" I blinked, thinking he had forgotten it already. "Charl..."
The look on his face and the press pass he proffered gave me a clue as to what he meant.
"Holger," I smiled.
"Holger who?"
"Holger Schlösser of 'Online Today'," I chuckled, taking the press pass.
"Excellent. Well, good luck getting your book signed. Maybe you will meet him and ask a question!" Holger chortled, then disappeared off into the night.
I felt nervous and a little bewildered as I sat there on the bench, staring at the press pass, realising the uniqueness of the bizarre opportunity that had been presented to me. I got up, wobbled and gulped nervously. It had been a while since I had drunk alcohol and it had gone straight to my head. Would they let me back into the Kesselhaus in this state? Would they accuse me of being the fake hack that I obviously was? I stumbled over to the desk where some ladies were tidying up outside the front door.
"Hi," I smiled, trying to buy some time to explain what I was doing there. I decided the best line of attack was to pretend that I was late because the trams had been stuck in traffic. I took out the press pass and waved it at the two bemused ladies, then prepared to launch into the explanation. The pass looked to me like an ordinary ticket in the light of the streetlamp, so I was beginning to doubt the success of my venture.
"Hey," another besuited, official-looking woman called over from nearby, "can I help you?" As I turned she spotted the ticket I clutched in my hands and recognised it instantly. "Ah, you are from the press! Come this way..." She led me round the corner and pointed me to the rear entrance, which I walked straight past. "You have gone too far!" she called, while I began to panic inwardly.
Sooner or later she would come to ask herself why a member of the press was apparently unable to remember where the press entrance was. She would then ask for authentication and my English accent would render my 'Holger Schlösser' impression unconvincing. I dithered past the entrance again and she scolded me. Luckily I then spotted the door handle, grappled with it for a few moments, then slipped inside.
You were already mid-way through your talk, unaware that one of the 'press' was a 20-year-old Electronic Engineering student on a year abroad, pretending to be a journalist from Online Today. I took a seat somewhere in the middle and listened again.
On the table was a copy of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At the end of your talk you asked the audience if they cared to hear you read from your book, or ask questions. Since they were all German and stood a cat in hell's chance of understanding an English author reading fluently from his own book, a hand shot up and someone asked you what the meaning of life was, or something along that vein. You didn't understand the question, I didn't understand the question and everybody else didn't either, so like a true professional you thanked him, explained that you did not know quite what he meant, and began to talk about dreams.
Dreams, you said, had this curious property of reflecting what was going on around you as you dreamed, which led to a curious paradox. Often a dream would seem to build up to a moment like a window slamming, upon which you awake. The question was, how did you know in your dream that the window was going to slam? You pragmatically decided that the memory of the dream was created at the exact moment that the window slammed. Or, when all their senses are switched off, the extra-sensory perception of all human beings becomes amplified. On primal Earth, primitive man had to rely on being instantly awake and aware when things happened around him, to avoid being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger or other nasty.
I think this went completely over everyone's head, except mine. I think everyone thinks about these things at some point, as they
do about space. At the age of six I lay back and tried to focus on space and think myself deeper and deeper until I reached the edge of the Universe. I realised that the Universe was infinitely huge and I was just a tiny, tiny part of it. The shock was so profound that I began to cry. But this surely happens to everyone, even you. You found a way of getting around it, by inventing your own universe with its own rules and quirks. I liked yours very much.
Some more questions were asked in due course and I began to seriously consider asking you a question myself, since I had recently been imbued with a press pass and the right to ask one. I decided to ask you how you intended to make money with h2g2. You finished what you were saying, looked at your watch and announced that you would take one more question from the audience. My arm shot up in the air before my brain had even considered asking it to. My brain was even considering a course of action to pull it down before anyone noticed, but the two pints were having a strange inhibiting effect. You looked over and pointed at me. "Yes, you."
"Mr. Adams," I said respectfully, "how do you intend to make money from h2g2?"
"Well, by floating it on the stock market like everyone else," you replied jokingly. "No, that's a good question," you added, buying yourself time to think of an answer. "That's a very good question, in fact, and I don't think we have time to answer it completely." To your credit, you did answer with a little explanation about 'webonomics' and how difficult it is to make money on the Internet. That was good enough for me!
Afterwards, you disappeared backstage again, never to be seen again by me. Some fans gathered around thrusting books in the direction of a burly bouncer, so I hovered near to them. I even contemplated asking to be let through, 'because I was English', but the bouncer looked like he was a no-nonsense type. Eventually, another man appeared through the door and began to collect books from people. I added mine to the pile.
"Mr. Adams is tired and has to fly to Helsinki [I think it was Helsinki] tomorrow," he said as people made enquiries about whether Mr. Adams was interested in a sly pint at a nearby biergarten.
A couple of minutes later and he reappeared with the stack of books. Mine was on the top of the pile, so I hurriedly took it away
before someone else swiped it. I opened the pages with trepidation, because there was a chance that you had refused to sign it, for obvious reasons. When I looked, I laughed out loud. You had signed it and added, '(who didn't write this)', because I had given you 'Bill the Galactic Hero' by Harry Harrison to sign! You are a sport, and the book takes pride of place in my collection. It was the only vaguely science fiction-related book of pocket size that I had with me in Berlin, you see. I also use my press pass as a bookmark to remind me just how bizarre that evening was.
Thank you, Douglas Adams. My only regret is that I never got to tell you over a gentle pint just how much magic you brought to the world.
Charles Williams
you won't remember me, because I was just a voice from the audience, but I remember you. I want to thank you for being an unwitting part of one of the strangest, yet enjoyable evenings of my life.
It was the 4th April 2000 (I remember) and you were presenting h2g2 to fans and the German media at the Berlin Kesselhaus, a converted brewery. (Nobody can say you couldn't organise a p**s-up at a brewery!) I went along to see you in the flesh, to see what a person who writes a legendary five-part trilogy looks like. As I sat near the front, a young German sat next to me and began studying some faxed articles about you. I could not help but take subtly surreptitious sideways glances to read them, and the journalist could not help but notice this. He saved my straining eyes by asking me if I wanted to read them. Smiling gratefully, I accepted and had a ganders at what they were saying.
"So, are you a fan?" the journalist asked conversationally.
"Oh, no," I replied. "I don't like to describe myself as a fan. When I hear that word I think of obsessed stalkers with dubious personal hygiene. I would describe myself as a wannabe science fiction author who was heavily influenced by Mr. Adams' books as a young teenager."
"I like to read science fiction myself," the journalist, Holger Schlösser, nodded. We began to talk about science fiction, the Internet and h2g2, of which I was already familiar.
"I hear he's signing books afterwards," Holger said after a while.
"Oh good, I brought one just in case," I smiled. I also had this plan, which I didn't mention to Holger, where I would casually enquire as you signed my book, whether you would be interested in a swift pint afterwards, a little chat as two Englishmen in Berlin. I felt curiously privileged to be English and here to see you, among all these Germans.
"I'm hoping he might come out for a pint afterwards," Holger added. It was then that I realised that every single person in that hall was there with the specific intention of asking you out to a pint afterwards. It turned out that Holger was also there to offer you $2000 to write an article for his magazine, Online Today. He understood that I hoped to chat to you, so he gamely offered to pass me off as a junior hack/translator.
At that moment, a German chap did a quick introduction, the hall darkened, the Toccata began to play and eventually you bounded onstage and paced up and down and posed for a couple of photos, illuminated by bright flashes. Hush descended and you began to talk about that time you, in a classically British way, brusquely shared a packet of biscuits with an anonymous man on Cambridge railway station. As you prepared to catch your train, you lifted your newspaper and discovered your packet of biscuits lying there, untouched. You actually wrote it into THHGTTG as Arthur Dent's story to chat-up Fenchurch.
You outlined your vision of the future and the work you were doing with h2g2, a lot of which I agreed with wholeheartedly. You
then concluded your talk and disappeared rather disappointingly backstage. Holger and I hung around with a lot of other milling Germans and met your PR manageress. Holger made his offer, which she promised to communicate, but it was clear that you were not signing books or going for a pint with anybody. We retreated to a nearby biergarten to lick our wounds.
As we supped our pints, Holger decided to check his e-mail. I found the next fifteen minutes quite amusing, because we proceeded to put into practice some of what you had been saying in the past hour. Using the infra-red link between his Ericsson mobile and his Compaq PDA, he was able to check his e-mail and then we browsed the web. We visited the h2g2 WAP site, which I had recently demonstrated in a presentation on the Wireless Application Protocol for a communications course at the Technische Universität Berlin. I grinned and said, "this is the future."
"Do you want to be a journalist?" Holger asked. I nodded. "I can help you. If you think of something to write, send it to me and I can show it to my editor at Tagesspiegel. All you have to do is find something on technology to write about. You can find something in England... You are ahead of us in technology, aren't you?" I nodded, unable to find the words to express myself. I could not believe that I was being offered such a chance!
After another pint, Holger looked at his watch. "I think I will skip the second presentation and go home."
"A second presentation?" I gaped, looking dumbfounded.
"Yes, and he's doing the book-signing afterwards," Holger explained. A look of amusement flickered across his face and he pushed his press pass towards me. "Hey, how about doing your first assignment as a journalist? What is your name?"
"Huh?" I blinked, thinking he had forgotten it already. "Charl..."
The look on his face and the press pass he proffered gave me a clue as to what he meant.
"Holger," I smiled.
"Holger who?"
"Holger Schlösser of 'Online Today'," I chuckled, taking the press pass.
"Excellent. Well, good luck getting your book signed. Maybe you will meet him and ask a question!" Holger chortled, then disappeared off into the night.
I felt nervous and a little bewildered as I sat there on the bench, staring at the press pass, realising the uniqueness of the bizarre opportunity that had been presented to me. I got up, wobbled and gulped nervously. It had been a while since I had drunk alcohol and it had gone straight to my head. Would they let me back into the Kesselhaus in this state? Would they accuse me of being the fake hack that I obviously was? I stumbled over to the desk where some ladies were tidying up outside the front door.
"Hi," I smiled, trying to buy some time to explain what I was doing there. I decided the best line of attack was to pretend that I was late because the trams had been stuck in traffic. I took out the press pass and waved it at the two bemused ladies, then prepared to launch into the explanation. The pass looked to me like an ordinary ticket in the light of the streetlamp, so I was beginning to doubt the success of my venture.
"Hey," another besuited, official-looking woman called over from nearby, "can I help you?" As I turned she spotted the ticket I clutched in my hands and recognised it instantly. "Ah, you are from the press! Come this way..." She led me round the corner and pointed me to the rear entrance, which I walked straight past. "You have gone too far!" she called, while I began to panic inwardly.
Sooner or later she would come to ask herself why a member of the press was apparently unable to remember where the press entrance was. She would then ask for authentication and my English accent would render my 'Holger Schlösser' impression unconvincing. I dithered past the entrance again and she scolded me. Luckily I then spotted the door handle, grappled with it for a few moments, then slipped inside.
You were already mid-way through your talk, unaware that one of the 'press' was a 20-year-old Electronic Engineering student on a year abroad, pretending to be a journalist from Online Today. I took a seat somewhere in the middle and listened again.
On the table was a copy of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At the end of your talk you asked the audience if they cared to hear you read from your book, or ask questions. Since they were all German and stood a cat in hell's chance of understanding an English author reading fluently from his own book, a hand shot up and someone asked you what the meaning of life was, or something along that vein. You didn't understand the question, I didn't understand the question and everybody else didn't either, so like a true professional you thanked him, explained that you did not know quite what he meant, and began to talk about dreams.
Dreams, you said, had this curious property of reflecting what was going on around you as you dreamed, which led to a curious paradox. Often a dream would seem to build up to a moment like a window slamming, upon which you awake. The question was, how did you know in your dream that the window was going to slam? You pragmatically decided that the memory of the dream was created at the exact moment that the window slammed. Or, when all their senses are switched off, the extra-sensory perception of all human beings becomes amplified. On primal Earth, primitive man had to rely on being instantly awake and aware when things happened around him, to avoid being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger or other nasty.
I think this went completely over everyone's head, except mine. I think everyone thinks about these things at some point, as they
do about space. At the age of six I lay back and tried to focus on space and think myself deeper and deeper until I reached the edge of the Universe. I realised that the Universe was infinitely huge and I was just a tiny, tiny part of it. The shock was so profound that I began to cry. But this surely happens to everyone, even you. You found a way of getting around it, by inventing your own universe with its own rules and quirks. I liked yours very much.
Some more questions were asked in due course and I began to seriously consider asking you a question myself, since I had recently been imbued with a press pass and the right to ask one. I decided to ask you how you intended to make money with h2g2. You finished what you were saying, looked at your watch and announced that you would take one more question from the audience. My arm shot up in the air before my brain had even considered asking it to. My brain was even considering a course of action to pull it down before anyone noticed, but the two pints were having a strange inhibiting effect. You looked over and pointed at me. "Yes, you."
"Mr. Adams," I said respectfully, "how do you intend to make money from h2g2?"
"Well, by floating it on the stock market like everyone else," you replied jokingly. "No, that's a good question," you added, buying yourself time to think of an answer. "That's a very good question, in fact, and I don't think we have time to answer it completely." To your credit, you did answer with a little explanation about 'webonomics' and how difficult it is to make money on the Internet. That was good enough for me!
Afterwards, you disappeared backstage again, never to be seen again by me. Some fans gathered around thrusting books in the direction of a burly bouncer, so I hovered near to them. I even contemplated asking to be let through, 'because I was English', but the bouncer looked like he was a no-nonsense type. Eventually, another man appeared through the door and began to collect books from people. I added mine to the pile.
"Mr. Adams is tired and has to fly to Helsinki [I think it was Helsinki] tomorrow," he said as people made enquiries about whether Mr. Adams was interested in a sly pint at a nearby biergarten.
A couple of minutes later and he reappeared with the stack of books. Mine was on the top of the pile, so I hurriedly took it away
before someone else swiped it. I opened the pages with trepidation, because there was a chance that you had refused to sign it, for obvious reasons. When I looked, I laughed out loud. You had signed it and added, '(who didn't write this)', because I had given you 'Bill the Galactic Hero' by Harry Harrison to sign! You are a sport, and the book takes pride of place in my collection. It was the only vaguely science fiction-related book of pocket size that I had with me in Berlin, you see. I also use my press pass as a bookmark to remind me just how bizarre that evening was.
Thank you, Douglas Adams. My only regret is that I never got to tell you over a gentle pint just how much magic you brought to the world.
Charles Williams
