2 pairs of eyes in the London Tornado

At 2.30 pm yesterday, P and I were in Kensal Rise, London, after the tornado hit the area.

Gathering with the press, the well dressed journos, we tried our best to be taken seriously, shouting everywhere we could "French Press! French Press! AFP!" - my favorite lie - and it worked quite well until P started to feel guilty and admitted we were students. Because we both look like we're 12 years old, press officers, policemen, witnesses, a woman who was in one of the damaged houses, the lib dem leader of Brent council pitied us and agreed to be interviewed. For one of the interview, other journos gathered around us and our minusculus tripod to film our man. That was pride! The group manager also agreed to take us on a private tour to one of the damaged houses.

One funny story was when we attended the press conference. We managed to set our equipment right in front of the stage, close to the big TV crews. Our mini tripod + videocam felt like some old and proud veteran standing by those giant cameras. P left to call the French TV and I was on my own dealing with the mic issues... The other journos had put their big hairy ones on the table and we just had the little clip mic. So I had no choice... I discretely plugged our one-million-kilometer-long cable into the camera, then to the mini mic (what was the most ridiculous, the cable or the mic??) and stepped towards the table to drop it delicately on one of those gigantic mics... I thank the other journos for a/ Not laughing at me b/ Pretending that it was common practise c/ Pretending that they hadn't seen anything!

We ended our evening in the Royal British legion where the people living in the damaged houses had been relocated. Most of the press had their vans nearby and journos were wearing ties and tuxedos. We arrived there after a long and cold walk, getting lost three times before meeting the holly stable.

It was a great experience, and (not surprisingly) we learnt more in one day than in 3 months. Working in a rush, worrying about the footages. Making phone calls and trying to sell our story abroad was also a bit of a challenge, and we found out how NOT to do it!