Day filming

I had forgotten the tight deadlines media folk work to. The film crew from Wales ITV, Ellie Pitt reporter/presenter and Lynn Courtney producer/director arrived before 9 o’clock having flown up from Cardiff yesterday evening and the cameraman from Scottish TV was here even earlier.
I was still eating my breakfast….
 
Fortunately the first half hour was taken up with setting up equipment and looking for locations around the garden. We had no sooner started filming when the cameraman, Robin, called a temporary halt. Noise. We listened.  Suddenly we became aware of all the background noise. It was as if all our neighbours had decided to mow their lawns. Actually the worst offenders , as far as sound was concerned were the two grounds men strimming up at the Bridge of Allan golf club .
M was despatched to try and persuade they to stop for a few hours. They did. (A couple of packs of beer are on their way to them).
 
After that, the filming went like clockwork and Caroline Boyce arrived mid morning.  We were in Craig-y-nos the children TB sanatorium together and now live only fifteen miles apart but had not discovered each other until I came to do the research for our book “The Children of Craig-y-nos”.
At 3pm the taxis arrived to take them back to Glasgow airport and we still hadn’t quite finished. It became a race against the clock and Robin the cameraman stayed on to do more shots of the garden. 
 
They seemed to be very taken with our garden, which was a relief cause because  neither Caroline nor I didn’t have to talk so much about the “ bad old days”.

The interviews will form part of an half hour documentary on Craig-ynos castle, the childrens TB sanatorium in the Swansea Valley, former home of opera diva Adelina Patti. It will be shown in September.