Jo Tells Me Where To Go
Continuing my series on the unsung heroes of Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Scotland and today we're in Inverness and introducing Joanne Morrison.
Jo is my Personal Assistant. She's the one who organises my diary in such a way that I end up criss-crossing Scotland every week. Frankly I think she doesn't like seeing me sitting in the office in Inverness. My recurring conversation with Jo involves the train service to Glasgow and whether or not I have to change at Perth. One day she's going to snap and force-feed me a copy of the train timetable.
Jo joined Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Scotland six months ago, after a career that included working for Northern Constabulary. She tells that the most confusing thing about the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú is that so many people dress casually - jeans, t-shirts - and so it's difficult to tell which person "outranks" another. I suggested we bring in a system of uniforms and stripes, but only because I've always fancied wearing a peaked hat.
On a recent trip to New York, Jo went into an Apple store in Manhattan and bought herself a personal laptop computer. Returning to Scotland she realised that she'd been charged for software that wasn't actually installed on the machine. Her subsequent tales of late night transatlantic telephone calls - and her subsquent refund - told me a lot about her haggling skils.
"Not that I'm tight-fisted!" she protests. Then again, she's the only person in this building who can get a two-for-one deal from the vending machine.
