Monday 1 June 2009

Birdsong, Brown and Carp

Sad news - Birdsong, Britain's most restful and purely enjoyable radio station, has gone, to be replaced by the usual cacophany (in fact an interactive cacophany, God help us). Surely there must be a home for birdsong somewhere else on the dial - perhaps featuring more extensive and ambitious recordings than Birdsong's. I note from para 5of the BBC story that the garden where Birdsong was recorded has gone on to an illustrious career in radio - why not give another garden a break? Or an entire wood?
Meanwhile, Pa Broon yields to the public will and announces that he will be, er... setting up a National Council for Democratic Renewal. What do we want? A National Council for Democratic Renewal! When do we want it? Now! There's a man with his finger on the pulse. And by the way I'm quite sure - pace The Yard - that he won't be gone by June. If ever there was an immovable object, it is Gordon Brown. In this, as in many things, he resembles that great comic creation, Augustus Carp, Esq, who, you may recall, commended at length his own remarkable abilities in playing the game Nuts In May. His laborious account of the game ends thus:
'Ultimately it might happen, and indeed it often did, that one of the sides would finally absorb the other, and the absorbing side usually including myself, my services were naturally in the keenest demand. I soon found, in fact, that, in spite of my ill-health, I was singularly adapted to this form of recreation. Inheriting, as I did, to a very great extent, my father's powerful and sonorous voice, I was able to throw myself with dominating effect into the preliminary vocal exchanges, while my physique stood me in admirable stead in the later stages of the game. For though I was short, with singularly slender arms, my abdomen was large and well covered, while my feet, with their exceptional length and breadth and almost imperceptible arches, enabled me to obtain a tenacious hold of the ground upon which they were set.'
Yes indeed.

4 comments:

  1. Augustus Carp is a new one for me, and it is the sort of thing that I like, so thankee once again Nige.

    Finding him here, I was struck by his opening remarks:

    In an age when every standard of decent conduct has either been torn down or is threatened with destruction; when every newspaper is daily reporting scenes of violence, divorce, and arson; when quite young girls smoke cigarettes and even, I am assured, sometimes cigars; when mature women, the mothers of unhappy children, enter the sea in one-piece bathing-costumes; and when married men, the heads of households, prefer the flicker of the cinematograph to the Athanasian Creed - then it is obviously a task, not to be justifiably avoided, to place some higher example before the world.

    Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme bloody chose, eh?

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  2. Might be worth trying Google for internet radio stations that broadcast birdsong, I guess. It's usually not too hard to hook up a PC to a hifi if you have one. Better than nothing, anyway.

    Summer is here and I've had enough of politics. If there was a pill that induced black and costive depression it would be called Broon. That fine Dutch word "drittsekk" (sp.?) applies to the whole lot of them and not just to a certain burger-muncher. Ugh!

    Augustus Carp sounds an ideal companion for the time of year. Thanks for that.

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  3. Carp may be his daytime job Nige, Chad is his evening occupation

    Wot, no prizes ?

    At 3 AM this morning the dicky birds sounded like the chorus from the Mahler Resurrection, including the Woodpigeons doing the Bradford barn dance on our roof

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