More thrills than skills – A half-life in journalism, part 73

Over the next few weeks, allmediascotland.com is to publish, each weekday, edited extracts from the memoirs of Scottish war correspondent, Paul Harris. ‘More thrills than skills: A half-life in journalism’, is being scheduled for publication next year.

MY interest in Albania was not entirely academic. A few months previously, I had met a girl on an Adria Airways flight out of Ljubljana airport.

Usually, Adria upgraded me to Business Class: not only was I a regular flyer with them, but, after the June 1991 attack on the airport, I had supplied their directors with a set of rather handsome photographs of the immediate aftermath of the bombing, showing their shredded Airbus A-230.

However, on this occasion the aircraft was packed out and there was only one seat left in economy. Seated beside the empty place was a strikingly attractive petite, dark-haired girl with large brown eyes.

Conversation proved easy. “Hello. Me Megan. Who you?” The young lady proffered her hand. It was the beginning of a long friendship. She called me from London a couple of days later with the imprecation: “You come fetch me.”

I did.