Readers will recall the podcast Airy Persiflage, wherein from time to time its onlie begetter, Walter O’Hara, turns his attentions to scribblings by Mr Key and the recitation thereof. In his latest outpourings for podpersons, Mr O’Hara tackles Ambrose And Signor Ploppo (accompanied by “young Gar”) and The Cruel Sea.
It is perhaps worth giving some background to Mr O’Hara’s choice of the latter piece. The other day, he “befriended” me on Facebookcloth. There, I noted that he can lay claim to having posted the most sensible status update ever to appear on the social networking site, a transcription of The Cruel Sea in its entirety. Several of his Facecloth friends wondered what he was wittering on about and made various (wrong) guesses before he revealed the sordid truth. At which point I stepped in to say how delighted I would be were he to recite the piece on his podcast. And lo! it came to pass!
Complete and (initially) unattributed transcription of Hooting Yard texts as Facecloth updates is clearly the way forward. Let us hope it catches on.
Alas, my hopes that the Facecloth universe, given as it is to pedantry and prognostication, would read THE CRUEL SEA as an invitation to continue its long string of seemingly random adjective/noun pairings as an invitation to continue the string with comments of their own (e.g. “The vituperative Amish. The unexploded sea-cow. the symbiotic jello.” etc). Sadly, the best response it solicited was “Future Doctor Who episodes”. Ah well, back to the salt mines.
W.