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?