Hydra Interviewed for French Radio
Joël Bronner of RFI (Radio France International)
Yesterday felt closer to a 'normal day' for me at Hydradirect than any for the last 15 months. I was asked to help a reporter to make contact with people on Hydra for his radio program. So yesterday, I did more running around town with an even bigger smile than normal and had lots of fun filming the interviews. It was a real breath of fresh air for me!
Journalist, Joel Bronner of RFI (Radio France International) arrived on the island in the morning and we spent nearly 6 hours meeting people from different business groups in town. What he wanted to ask was how the island had been affected by the Covid crisis last year, what everyone was anticipating for this year in advance of fully opening for tourism, and finally how the island's vaccination program was going. As ever, I went into overdrive to make sure he had a good representative selection of people to interview. The poor man was exhausted but very happy when he left the island in the afternoon.
Joel's radio broadcast will air on French radio next week. And even though he gathered so much information, his program slots only total about 6 minutes, so he will have to prune the 4 hours of recorded interviews quite ruthlessly. But he very kindly agreed to let me follow him so I could capture the highlights for everyone involved to share here.
The experience of watching Joel at work for radio rather than film was also an eye-opener for me. As he said, the interviews are important, but he needed to collect background noise to add atmosphere. So we had fun with Dimitris running the engine on the Alma Libra, Robi slapping menus on to tables at Kai Kremmidi and I even had to walk up and down with one of Harriet's horses, Rouli, to get the clip clop sounds for Joel. At the Isaolos, we almost had too much background noise with all the happy chatter and cups clinking that had Katerina huddled so close to Joel's microphone that I could hardly catch any of her words on my video. But my favourite was asking Cosmas who is in the midst of deep cleaning his kitchen at Oraia Ydra to make convincing cooking and service noises!
I really enjoyed listening to what everyone had to say. Angelos of Turquiose eloquently summarised our optimism for a better season than last year. Spiros of the Hydra Homes Shop (AKA the Plastic Man) sent Joel on his way with a Hydra flag as a momento to remind him of his visit. And I thank our Mayor George Koukoudakis for allowing us to interrupt his work on the planning of the Miaoulia Festival, which will take place from the 25th - 27th June 2021.
Even I have had to edit a lot of the material I gathered for my blog video, but I will send everyone a bespoke little video of all the clips I took.
My only regret was not being able to introduce Joel to Mary Katsika and the medical team who are still in the thick of vaccinating the 20-year olds on the island and just couldn't take time out. However, I will be interviewing them at a later date. Just to clarify, as George mentions, 100% of all those who have asked for the vaccination will have had it by the end of May. Mary has confirmed that this is about 65% of the population so far.
Thank you to everyone for their collective cooperation and for presenting Hydra so well. In fact, the only disappointingly uncooperative element to the whole day, were the silent animals. Not a bray from a mule nor even a purr from a street cat. Only the ducks were vocal as they chased off some pigeons. Ducks? Ducks .... not exactly what you expect on Hydra!
Wishing everyone a safe and happy time on Hydra this season.
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