Paul Wise

I come from a musical family, of whom I am without doubt the least musical. I passed Grade VIII piano at the second attempt – by the skin of my teeth, and only because the examiner shared my sense of humour. Before FMR, my experience of the Artscape Opera House was in the 1970s as a member of Capab’s ad hoc opera chorus, usually appearing in the back row of the coro di popolo.

My first job was as a high-school teacher of English, but it didn’t take long for the adolescents of the 1980s to see through my increasingly contrived attempts to interest them in Shakespeare and indirect speech. Then I found, to my surprise, that there was another job I could do on the strength of an English major, namely Hansard reporting: preparing the “verbatim” – in fact, carefully edited – record of parliamentary debates. (I call it “invisible mending”.)

I worked at Parliament from 1986 until 2003. It was an interesting time: from the era of PW Botha to that of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. (Not to mention the honourable member for Johannesburg North, one Peter Soal.) Dramatic changes, but also a touch of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I knew it was time to leave when they tried to make a manager out of me – when administrative meetings outnumbered parliamentary sittings and management-speak prevailed over the eleven official languages. Now I am a freelance copy editor and occasional translator – or, if you like, an invisible mender for hire. When the uncertainty of self-employment becomes particularly unnerving, I regain perspective by listening to peak-hour traffic reports (preferably from the comfort of my bed) or watching the Parliamentary Channel.

Paul Wise presents “Classical Choice” on Mondays (9:00-12:00) and often helps out elsewhere when needed.