What time is it?

Time is a funny old thing. One of the reasons we have station clocks is because in 1840 the Great Western Railway introduced so-called railway time to overcome the problems caused by each town in the expanding railway network having its own local mean time. The clocks showed passengers what this unified time was.

I don't know about you, but time has lost all meaning in our house. It is apparently Thursday and I gather that tomorrow it will be May. I've just had a cheese and pickle sandwich, but I couldn't tell you if it was lunch or just a little something to tide me over until the next meal, whatever that will be.

References to dates in books can lead to unintended results. In the entry for 22 March in A Sparge Bag on the Washing Line, I wrote: ‘We hear that Brexit is to be delayed. I can’t bring myself to go into details here – and anyway by the time you’re reading this it will all have been resolved and we shall be looking back on these crazy times, laughing and saying, “What were we thinking!”’

On 10 March, I was interviewed by Andy Gibney of 3P Publishing for The Writer's Hut podcasts. I mention the date because if/when you listen, you will hear Andy joking that by the time the recording goes out we will all have forgotten about coronavirus. Yeah, about that...

If you'd like to listen to the podcast in which I talk about my writing and editing life and various other bits and pieces - Andy is a great interviewer - you can find it here.

Wanted: short stories for broadcast

You know how I've read out a couple of my short stories for my publisher's podcast? Well, now 3P Publishing would like to offer this opportunity to other writers and is looking for tales that take somewhere between five and ten minutes to read aloud.

There is no payment, I'm afraid, but it might be a good way to showcase to a wider audience a story that you've had published already. You will be credited, of course, and 3P will give a link to your website and publications. Look on it as a marketing exercise! If you have the necessary tech, you might be able to record the story yourself (I used Audacity and submitted a mono MP3 file), or a member of the 3P team will read it for you.

If you have a suitable story for which you own broadcasting rights, please drop a line to Caroline Snelling (caroline@3ppublishing.co.uk) and she can talk you through what's what.

You can hear all the stories that have already been broadcast here.

Bedtime stories

Photo: morguefile.com

A few weeks ago, I went along to 3P Publishing to record a podcast about my writing life. It hasn't been broadcast yet - I'll let you know when it is, of course - but in the meantime, the 3P team have started another stream of podcasts, namely a bedtime story every night at 9pm. On Tuesday, one of my stories was broadcast, Scoring An Own Goal in Tennis, which I recorded at home using Audacity and emailed across.

I'm getting the hang of reading out my own stories, I think, but recording them is a little different. Setting aside the popping p and the hissing s, which problems can be resolved by positioning the mic correctly, there are also considerations of when to breathe and swallow, and how to turn the pages without making a noise.

I thought I'd done an OK job, but on listening back before I submitted the MP3 file, I realised that in spite of it being written correctly on the page as 'Tommy and Bob', I'd actually said 'Bobby and Tom'. Why?! Anyway, I was able to re-record a snippet and edit it in (or rather, Mr Thorley did the editing for me) and you can't see the join, as they say.

Please have a listen, and check out the other stories, too. More will follow.