Nice weekend

Sometimes everything just pans out to a great few days.  Thursday evening was spent listening to John Sackville read A Hundred Thousand Dragons, my new audiobook which I downloaded from Amazon’s Audible range. 

It’s always a bit nerve wracking listening to your own work being read, but John nailed it.  I honestly couldn’t be happier with the way he got the characters across.  Result!

Friday contained a very unexpected treat.  Would you, said Jessica, the eldest, down the phone, like to come to the Hilton in Manchester for a champagne afternoon tea with me and James?  Well, you know, twist my arm...  But why, O child?  I enquired.  What’s brought this opulence into your (and my) life?  To cut a long story short, she’d been given a voucher for the tea for a birthday present and Sarah and Nigel, who should have been going with her, couldn’t make it.  It’s an ill wind... So me and Angela, who happened to be there for the afternoon, arrayed ourselves in appropriate garments and the four of us had an hour of complete indulgence amongst the champagne, tiny sandwiches and yummy cakes. 

I don't know why I look so startled.  I was hugely happy!

More champagne, Mum? asked Jessica.  I was steadily working my way through the different teas.  I’d done Green Gunpowder and Darjeeling, had tried the peppermint and was considering the jasmine.  Tea or champagne?  It’s my perfect dilemma.

The reason why Angela was around this weekend was that we were going to the Big Do at the BBC’s site in Media City, Salford.

Who's calling?

  The highlight of the day was a studio tour where we all got to play in a radio drama studio.  If you’ve ever wondered why the pages of the script don’t rustle on the radio (I have) it’s because they’re on laminated paper and don’t make a sound as you turn over the script.  Want to know what makes the sound of beating wings, as a flock of birds rise up from crumbling towers?  That’s about seven pairs of rubber gloves tied together with an elastic band and flapped vigorously.  A door shutting is, however, a real door.  There’s one in the studio in a door frame. 

Video killed the radio star....

One really weird part of the radio studio was the Dead Room or, to give it its proper title, the Anechoic Chamber.  It’s a L-shaped room where the walls and ceiling consist of hundreds of foam blocks in various shapes, which completely absorb and deaden the sound.  The BBC’s Dead Room is actually a semi-anechoic chamber, as the floor is tiled.  Because there’s nothing for the sound waves to bounce off, it’s perfect for replicating the sound of outdoors.  (There’s nothing, in a field, say, for your voice to bounce off).  Add a few birds or a cow mooing on a soundtrack and it sounds as if your characters are chatting in the great wide open spaces.  The L shape makes another effect possible.  Say you want someone to fall off a cliff, for instance, and the noise of their protest will fall away (“Arrrrrrrrrghhhh!”)  as they do.  Actors object to falling off cliffs.  (I know, I know, but you can’t get the staff.) So, in the Dead Room, if someone runs round the corner yelling, their voice fades away in a perfect Doppler effect, exactly like someone falling.  Weird.

It’s an odd sensation, being in the Dead Room, with the sound being so – well – dead.  I found a headache starting after about five minutes or so.  Apparently the complete Anechoic Chambers (the floor is foam and you walk on a net suspended over it) that are used in industry to test noise are a bit more than weird.  The time spent in them is limited to about fifteen minutes as, after that, you can hear the circulation of your own blood and the sound of your own lungs, etc., which is very odd indeed.

The weekend finished with us taking advantage of the hour change and the weather with a walk in the park, where the  old stocks have been replaced.  Well, you’ve got to do it, haven’t you?

     

After The Exhibition

I was expecting my brother to call – he’s a real early bird – so I didn’t think twice when the doorbell rang at quarter past eight in the morning.  I put down my cup of tea and opened the door (still in my PJ’s) to find not Mike but a courier, holding a box of what I recognised straight away as books. 

I beamed so happily at the man he blinked.  “There must be,” he said, glancing down at the box, “something nice in here.”

There was.  After The Exhibition all crisp and new and looking just gorrrjuss.  Jack’s latest mystery takes place after an exhibition of church art in London, where various events, complications, machinations and mysteries are set in progress.  Church art, as I’m well aware, doesn’t by itself suggest murder, mayhem and sudden death; I hope it might – after you’ve read the book! 

Film Night

On Friday, ITV showed Practical Magic.  It had a great cast – Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman – and the premise looked good.  A family of New England witches want to rid themselves of a curse thoughtlessly laid on them back in Sixteen-O-Whenever that any man any of the girls in the family fell in love with would die.  (There didn’t seem to have ever been any wizards in the family; the progeny seemed to be exclusively girls.)

Well, so far, so good and the first few minutes were definitely played for laughs in a sort of Hocus Pocus way.  Then Real Life intruded as the two sisters, Sensible Sally and Good-time Gillian, have to face the problem of a bloke picked up by GT Gillian who is what you might call overly intrusive in his attentions.  Sensible Sally bumps him off and then the two sisters, horrified at the thought of murder, try and bring him back to life. 

The trouble is, that the film couldn’t decide if it was a comedy or a horror.  It veered uneasily between both, undercutting itself at every point.  The moral for writers?  Decide what the tone is and stick to it. Obviously, use comedy, suspense and even horror to liven up the story but the overall tone should be very clearly one thing or another.

A film there wasn’t any doubt about is Captain Phillips, which Peter and I saw last night together with the eldest, Jessica, accompanied by a pizza and a bottle of wine.  Tom Hanks gives a wonderful performance, utterly believable as the professional merchant captain whose ship is hijacked by Somali pirates.  The film buzzes from the word go and cracks along.  A great way to spend a Saturday night!