So Far, I Have Said Nothing About Odour.

Concerning Souvenir Programme recordings, working partnerships, Midsummer Moomins, sceptical New Hebrideans, long-limbed koalas, and unextractable yoghurt.

The Prince and Ted

In 1975, two men came together to write a book about backgammon.

Who can say, at this distance, how Prince Alexis Obolensky and Ted James divided the labours of writing? Perhaps Ted James paced furiously up and down the room reeling off improvised attacks and defences of coruscating brilliance, while Prince Alexis Obolensky feverishly tried to keep up with him on his trusty Underwood Touch-Master. Or perhaps Ted James merely dashed off a few stray thoughts on a cocktail napkin in Cannes, and sent them to Prince Alexis Obolensky’s bed-sit in Canning Town to see if Prince Alexis Obolensky could work them up into a book.

As I say, we’ll never know. All we can tell from the authors’ page is that Ted James was no slave to the limelight.

News and Ads

Loads this week. Strap in.

Souvenir Programme Recordings

This year’s recordings of John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme will be on Monday 14th July, one at 6.15pm and one at 8.15pm. They are about an hour long, and are free. To be entered into the draw for tickets go here… and, especially and exclusively for you splendid people, there is a small stock of reserved tickets if you enter the code FinnSouv in the section marked ‘comments and other information’! First come, first served; but even if you miss those, you’ll still be entered into the normal draw.

Souvenir Programme Try-Out

Alternatively, there’s the last try-out in Camden on the 8th July, but you might need to look sharp, because there are only 22 tickets left.

John Finnemore Among Others

After that, we have a new date for my perpetual micro-tour and this time the black spot has been drawn by Tunbridge Wells. My favourite Souvenir Programme cast member - who is now, has always been, and always will be Margaret Cabourn-Smith - and I will be doing a bagful of sketches and a Double Act (probably A Flock of Tigers) at the Trinity Theatre on Friday 12th September.

Moominsummer Madness

The Moomins are back! Well, the Moomins never went away, of course, but what I mean is the Radio 4 dramatisations of their adventures in which it is my honour and delight to play Moomintroll are back, with a Midsummer adventure.

New Puzzles Place

Keep watching this space. I’d trying to build up a little stockpile of puzzles before I launch it.

A Likely Story

This is Evelyn Cheesman. She was a British entomologist, collector and traveller, who was the first female curator at London Zoo, and collected around 70,000 specimens for the Natural History Museum from across the South Pacific, during a lifetime of long solo expeditions, the last of which she made at the age of 73. If you want to read more about her - and really, at this point, how could you not? - here's a good place to start.

Anyway, in one of her many books about her adventures, 'Time Well Spent', she talks about the types of knowledge that indigenous people were prepared to accept from a foreigner and a woman, and that which they were not. To summarise, she says they were prepared to accept facts about things they'd never seen before - cameras, for instance - but not about things familiar to them.

"I am thinking now of the people on Malekula, New Hebrides, who did not know that a caterpillar changed into a butterfly. That new idea was too much to swallow from a stranger. One serious old man made a speech purporting to assure me that, even if this irregular sort of thing took place in my country, I need not expect it to occur on their island."

Are you Sitting Comfortably?

Last week, I drew your attention to some diagrams of koala resting positions, because if I don’t do it, who will? To refresh your memory:

Tealin commented

Most of those koalas look like they could have been drawn from life, or at least from photographs, but I suspect (d) is the PI pulling our legs a little, as those are rather human proportions ...

Well, exactly. It was very much the intensely carefree koala pictured in position d that caught my attention and made me take a photo of the diagram when I came across it. Do koalas ever sit like that? And if they do, are their arms and legs really that long?

Well. I had a little look, and, on the other side of the rabbit-proof fence, I will reveal the fruits of my research, which I modestly believe will send shock-waves through the entire how-koalas-sit scientific community. Also there’s a small silly joke about a yoghurt. But if that mix sounds a little too rich for your blood then fair enough, and

Love,

The Airport.