Airy Persiflage

Vera Brittan: The Arrival of the Americans at the Western Front

From The Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittan  Read by Walt O'Hara

 

 

Vera Brittain lost her fiance, brother and two closest male friends in the first world war. She wrote Testament of Youth as a cry of outrage and agony, so that the futility of their deaths would be remembered. Eighty years on, it remains one of the most powerful and widely read war memoirs of all time.

This short read is my favorite section of this book, where Vera and her fellow nurses (French) witness the arrival of fresh American troops in their sector of the battlefield.  The contrast between her nervy war weariness, her cautious upswelling of hope where little was there before... it's just a fantastic couple of paragraphs, and a perfect addition here.

Initially recorded for my audio boom account, I am moving it here due to Audioboom's pay policies. 

The Tale of the Boffin and the Guttersnipe by Frank Key

The Tale of the Boffin and the Guttersnipe

 A boffin was pouring bleach into a funnel when along came a guttersnipe.

“How now, boffin,” said the guttersnipe, “I am but a poor guttersnipe and for raiment I have only rags, as you can see. If I become a boffin’s assistant I can cover these rags with a fine white coat and then I shall not be spat upon by citizens as I toil along the lanes of this shining yet merciless city. Can I pour that tinted bleach into the funnel for you? Then you would be free to go and take a nap, or to think higher thoughts.”

 So begins The Tale of the Boffin and the Guttersnipe.  

From: By Aerostat to Hooting Yard: A Frank Key Reader
Chapter 12

Mood music: Lobo Loco, "Sleeping Dragons" used with Creative Commons License.

 

Ulysses, by Tennyson

A recent viewing of the Steven Colbert show featured Dame Helen Mirren as a guest.  She read a portion of Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson out loud and Colbert was visibly moved.  I understood what he felt, because I was, too.  This is my inferior version of the entire poem, which I am appreciating once again.

The Blind Goose-Killer of Urk

Musings on Cannon Fire at Dusk, as I walk across the parking lot to an old minivan

 

I'll admit this up front, I recorded this on an Ipad on the way home the week before the Inauguration, 2017, so it's in the future tense.  Our President has been in office for about two weeks now and I just found this audio Snippet on my Google drive.

I should know better when I hear cannon fire at the work place.. I left my job on the 13th of Jan that night and heard the steady syncopation of BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM and it took me a few minutes to realize what I was listening to.  The Old Guard Saluting Battery, practicing for their big moment of giving the new President a 21 gun salute.  Someone has to do this.. and if they are going to do it, they are going to do it right.  I've seen this many times, and they are a good outfit-- thoroughly professional.  In the short gloomy dusk of a Friday evening in January, it completely mystified me for a moment.  Only in Washington!

Seeing RED

Charlie's Back

 

Sometimes, the Bad Seed is the one you don't immediately notice.

100 Words Podcast: "PAN"

Attached is my entry into Laurence Simon's 100 Word Podcast challenge.  The theme is "PAN".  

These are harder than they look!  Hope you like it.

The Will, by Eoin Flynn

This is an interesting Irish short story by Mr. Eoin Flynn, written in 2004 and copyright Eoin Flynn.  It's hard to categorize this story.  It seems wistful at first, yet has elements that are downright supernatural towards the end, even a bit of a horror story, even.  Who needs a category, eh?

This is a short read to test my new pop filter (which worked) but I was recording late-ish and it's not my best read by far.  My attempts to lapse into a Gaelic accent are awful, but I was game to give it a go.

V/R

Walter O'Hara

On the Bad Vicarage, by Mr. Frank Key, read by Walt O'Hara

"The vicarage is bad indeed, as bad as any vicarage in Christendom. But the vicar whose sinecure it is is, shall we say, a fair to middling vicar. I would not call him good, but he is by no means as bad as the Bad Vicar of old.”

Not for the faint of heart, Mr. Key's spine tingling tale of a monstrous vicar of old and the evil that he wrought! 

It was high time we did a Frank Key piece here, and this tickled my fancy when it was written two years ago.