COW 2023 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

After dinner I took part in one of Russell King's co-operative planning event type games/exercises. Russell has had an interest in 1970s emergency planning for a few years, and has dipped in and out of the subject from time to time. This one was based on the BBC being asked to prepare an emergency broadcast tape to be run on the single TV broadcast channel in the event of something unspeakable happening, including, but not limited to, nuclear war, major civil disturbance, involuntary break up of the United Kingdom and so on. We were given a briefing by Mark F in the role of the Director General, and some background from Russell. We were then allocated roles - I was Head of Arts Programming, and we had similar roles for Sport, Drama, Children, Comedy and Light Entertainment and so on. The tape was to run for 72 hours, starting at 12 noon. No news was required, as that would be handled by BBC Radio.

The elite programme schedulers of the BBC swing into action

The way we assembled the schedule was simple. Russell had photocopied many pages from the Radio Times of the period (no ITV programmes allowed!) and gave us some flip chart pages with a time line. We had to chose our programmes, snip them out then glue them in place.

We were soon in full nostalgia mode - Tom Baker Doctor Who, Mary, Mungo & Midge etc - and cutting and sticking away. There's a video clip somewhere which includes me clearly saying "Ah! A two hour documentary on Isadora Duncan! That's what the people need." The youngest member of the group was utterly baffled by the type of programmes we used to watch.

We should really have sat down and discussed this properly first. We did not address the issue that after 72 hours programmes would repeat at the same time. Perhaps we should have done 70 hours, so they off set by 2 hours a day. We never really talked about what should be on at what time of the day. 24 hour TV was a thing of the future in 1975. What should we put on at breakfast (re-runs of the 1966 World Cup Final according to Matt, gloriously ignoring any affect this might have on the regions).

The Master Plan

We finally filled every slot, although some of our choices were suspect. Why would you show episode three of a Doctor Who story with no chance of the others ever appearing anytime soon? And from this distance, the number of programmes featuring Jimmy Saville, Dave Lee Travis et al is truly disturbing.

It was an interesting session that made you think about how this sort of thing would be done (almost certainly NOT LIKE THIS), and as Russell remarked, there's probably something like this being updated even today. Of course with streaming and digital storage the problem is different nowadays, and a simple 72 hour loop would most likely be at least a week if not more.

By the time we had done the bar was closing. Missenden Abbey is going to have to work at that. So I had a quick drink and headed for back, with cries of "Come and play Junta" echoing behind me. It was the new card based version. I'd have loved to, but the previous night's 2am finish had washed me out.

Sunday morning saw me signed up for Evan's RPG set in the Pacific in WW2. A small group of soldiers are dropped on a remote island by a flying boat, and told to assess its potential and likely future uses. What could possibly go wrong?

I drew the role of the team medic. You can see from the photo we were an elite bunch. Our commander and other members of the team are out of shot to the left.

All aboard for a cushy assignment on an island paradise with sandy beeches

Because we were Japanese and so could leave no cliché unturned I grabbed my notebook and scribbled a quick haiku:

On the beech

The gulls circle in the sky

All is tranquillity

We surveyed the beech, then went in search of fresh water. This involved hacking our way through the jungle. Were we going the right way? Should we go back to the flying boat?

When we are on a path

Can we ever truly return?

Change is our future

It didn't take long before one of the party (an NPC) had disappeared. Investigations revealed he'd stepped off the path to take a leak then got spirited away. Not far, as we then stumbled into a clearing with neolithic statues and a very dead Japanese soldier who had been hacked about by stone tools.

We resolved to press on. To cut a long story short, we avoided the stone age tribe. Mostly. We did lose another NPC. Then we found the centrepiece of the scenario. It involved going underground and primitive carvings and so on.

Evan gets a pen out

It then got serious, and Evan had to resort to drawing it all out. Then we turned on each other, and it all went south fairly quickly. The survivors stumbled around in the dark, chucking grenades at things in an effort to seal it all off. Who knows if we succeeded.

We made it back it the flying boat and left the island. The corporal and I concocted a story that the island was infested by a large stone age tribe and that in order to clear them out given the cover afforded by the thick jungle, we'd need more than a section. And anyway, completely unsuitable as a location.

The Temple is in the jungle

It contains many secrets

Then we went home

Then it was time for lunch. A good, well paced scenario, enhanced by the sound effects from Evan's laptop. Young people are so good at this technical stuff.

Roast pork for lunch, then the AGM (we're coming back next year), then back in the car for the drive home, accompanied by the commentary on England's Ashes test win which got me nearly to my front door.

Roll on next year.