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(This episode is marked as explicit because of sexual imagery.)
Episode image is a detail from a photo by Charles Adrian.
CW: Chris Goode is mentioned in this episode, along with a book that he gave Charles Adrian.
Beginning with a brief cloudburst and a coda to the previous episode designed to calm Charles Adrian’s esprit d’escalier, the 28th Page One In Review goes on to look at the first five books from the fourth season of the podcast.
The Bees by Laline Paull, Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser and Unless by Carol Shields are all discussed at more length in Page One 184. Revolutionary Letters by Diane Di Prima is discussed at more length in Page One 122 and Page One 190.
You can read an outline of the life of Mary Queen of Scots on Wikipedia here.
You can read about Dungeons & Dragons on Wikipedia here.
You can read about Petrópolis, the Brazilian Imperial City, on Wikipedia here.
Swimmer by Dennis Cooper is also discussed in Page One 186. Another book by Dennis Cooper, Guide, is discussed in Page One 72.
You can find Dennis Cooper’s potentially NSFW blog here.
The books discussed in the main part of this episode were previously discussed in Page One 107, Page One 108, Page One 109, Page One 110 and Page One 111.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 6th October, 2020.
Episode released: 3rd November, 2020.
Book listing:
A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley (Page One 107)
Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle (Page One 108)
Irma Voth by Miriam Toews (Page One 109)
Insomnia and Song For The Rainy Season from Collected Poems by Elizabeth Bishop (Page One 110)
First Sex (excerpt) and Swimmer from The Dream Police by Dennis Cooper (Page One 111 and Page One 186)
Links:
Mary Queen of Scots on Wikipedia
Dungeons & Dragons on Wikipedia
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
[faint sound of rain falling the other side of a window]
Charles Adrian
Goodness, the rain is now falling down with a... with a force. You can probably hear it. It's been... Yeah, we had some really rainy days over the weekend. It was... I think it was some storm or other. My older sister texted me to ask how all the plants on my roof were doing after... I think she called it Storm Alex. So. I'm not... I don't... As I've said before [laughing] on the podcast, I don't watch the weather forecast so, yeah, I didn't know that it had a... all that rain had a name. But in any case, yeah, it's been an all right day so far today and now suddenly: cloudburst. So you might be able to hear that in the background. I don't know.
In any case, hello and welcome to the 185th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and this is the 28th Page One In Review. Today is Tuesday the 6th of October, 2020. For those of you who are new to the podcast, Page One is a book podcast and these Page One In Review episodes are episodes in which I'm going through all of the books that I've been given by guests on my podcast over the last eight years.
Now, I did want to say in... today in this episode that I think one of the... one of the hazards of making these episodes in the way that I do - in other words in this slightly ad hoc fashion - is that I am very often afflicted by significant and upsetting esprit d'escalier. So when I'm editing the episodes and listening to what I said I... yeah, I very often realise that there are all kinds of very important things that I did not say. And that is true for all of the books that I was talking about in the previous episode - in the 184th Page One - so I just wanted to add a little coda to that episode here before we get going on today's episode. Because...
So, first of all, I didn't make enough of - or, well, I didn't make anything of - the fact that The Bees by Laline Paul, as well as being the story of this bee Flora 717 and her rise up through the hive, is also an allegory of life under white body supremacy. Flora 717 is described as... I think described as black - certainly dark - and is very often... underestimated? Yeah, that's the word. Underestimated. She's... Yeah, there's always... it's always a surprise that she's so good at the things that she is manifestly so good at. So, yeah, I think that's an important thing to say about The Bees. It's one of the things that makes the novel what it is.
Secondly... So, at the end of the episode I was talking about Flash... Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser and although I did talk a little bit about Flashman and his less appealing qualities I... what I didn't say and could have said is that he's cowardly and libidinous and shifty and inept and nevertheless he's... he's very often taken at his word by the people around him because of his position as a male member of the British upper classes with the right schooling and the right accent and so on. And his word is very often a lie. Except, interestingly, in this extended autobiography that George MacDonald Fraser has invented for him, in which he apparently tells us all. And that's one of the interesting things and perhaps one of the charming things about Flashman. He's a problematic character but the self-knowledge that I did, I think, talk about includes all of that: he knows that he's cowardly and inept and shifty and libidinous and dishonest. And this is... you know, it's really... these books are really a tell-all. So that doesn't excuse him - I still... he's still somebody that I wouldn't want to know - but it makes the books interesting.
Then... Oh, and then... So the book that I was talking about in the middle of the episode, Carol Shields' Unless... there... so I did talk in the original version of that episode that I recorded about the... So... In the episode as you might have heard it if you've listened to it, [laughing] you'll... you'll hear that... you might have heard that I talked a little bit about the generational gap between the mother, who turns out to be called Reta [/retə/] - I think... or Reta [/riːtə/]... I'm not sure... it's [spelling] r e t a anyway - Reta [/reɪtə/]... Reta [/retə/] and her daughter Nora...
Sorry. How did that sentence start? Yeah, so I talked a little bit about the generational gap between those two and the fact that they have very different ways of seeing the world and... So when I recorded that episode I went on to say that it made me think of some lines from Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters that Chris Goode read during the 122nd Page One. That's a book that I'm... I'm going to come back to in a few episodes' time but the lines are from Revolutionary Letter #8 and I really, really like them so, yeah, I wanted to put them back in here. They go:
NO ONE WAY WORKS, it will take all of us
shoving it the thing from all sides
to bring it down.
And I think that's... yeah, I really like that. It has a lot of resonance for me. So I did say that when I was recording the episode, but I said it so badly that I decided to just cut all mention of Diane di Prima out of the episode that I... that I released into the world. So, yeah, there's a little coda because I did want to reinstate that. I think that's... Yeah, I think it's easy for us to separate ourselves - and I've said this before on the podcast - separate ourselves into teams and that happens very often, as we all know, on social media. And I really like that... yeah, Diane di Prima says that about revelution, that... not that you need to accept, obviously, everybody's point of view but that differing... differing ways of seeing things - if... you know, as long as we're all heading in the same direction or trying to head in the same direction - they're all necessary. So [disheartened sound] I'm... I feel like I'm getting lost again in that. But all I wanted to say is, yeah, I think the... the nineteen-year-old Nora is, yeah, not necessarily wrong to be s... sitting on the street with her sign saying ‘Goodness’ and her mother is not necessarily wrong to be frustrated by that.
Okay. Right. Let's get on to this episode. This... Oh this is going to be a very strange episode altogether. They're all strange episodes aren't they. As I say, there... perhaps there's a better way of making these that is not quite so ad hoc. But I... there's a... I don't know, there's a quality that I like about the reaching for things that you can hear when you listen to these.
What was I...? Yeah, so this episode was going to contain... I had prepared three books to talk about in this episode and then I realised today, just looking up to check which episodes those books came from, that there are two books missing from my bookshelf here. So. Yeah. Okay, this episode will contain three books and two ghost books but I don't have very much to say about the ghost books so it's mostly going to be just the three books that I have in front of me and can talk about.
The first of those books was given to me by Vera Chok...
[page turning]
... during the 107th Page One, which was the first episode of the fourth season of the podcast. And, yeah, as always, Vera was my first guest for that season. I can't remember where we had that conversation - somewhere in London, probably wherever she was living at the time. Vera gave me A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley, which I think is my favourite of the six books that Vera has given to me as a result of being on my podcast. This is... It's a wonderful book. It's for children - young people - and it's the... it's the story of this girl Penelope... what's her name? Penelope Caberner... Yeah, she says on the first page:
I, Penelope Taberner Cameron, tell this story of happenings when I was a young girl.
So there are lots of lots of wonderful things about this. First of all, the book itself was written quite a while ago. The author... It says here:
Alison Utley was born at the end of the 19th century...
And so, yeah, this... this narrator is talking... she's talking as an adult about a time when she was a child and then the... the events of - or many of the events of - the books [sic] go further back in time to the Elizabethan days. This is a story of... It's a kind of romance of an attempted rescue of Mary Queen of Scots. So obviously a doomed romance in that sense. We... You know, the story of Mary Queen of Scots is available for all of us to look up and find out about. You know, the... all kinds of things happened in her life and the... you know, the fact that it seems so unfair - at least according to one reading of the situation - that she should have been executed in the end... And so I think that's the... yeah, that's the line that Alison Uttley takes here.
So basically Penelope goes to stay with a great aunt and a great uncle on a farm - or in a... yeah, I think a farm - probably in Derbyshire called Thackers. And she slips back in time every now and then. And it's... I find it delightful. I... Yeah, absolutely delightful. I love the relationship that she has with her great aunt particularly and I love all the adventures that she has as a... oh, what's the word I'm looking for... an interloper in... in the sixteenth century.
This is a Jane Nissen Books edition of A Traveller In Time and it is 286 pages long. I'm going to read you a little bit from pages 45 and 46 and then possibly 47. This is, I think, not the first time in this novel that Penelope has experienced people from the past but it's the... it's the one that I remember most clearly from having read the novel and I just... I love it. I love the fact that... Well, yeah, I'll read it and then I'll tell you.
‘I shall want a rug, Cicely Anne’ said Uncle Barnabas, and my aunt asked me to fetch it from her bed, where it lay. The everyday rug was kept in the coach-house but we were to have the heavy Scotch plaid.
Upstairs I went again, but when I got to the landing I looked at the closed doors and did not know which was Aunt Tissie's, for there was something strange and unfamiliar about them. I hesitated and opened a door, and then stopped short, for in the room before me, down a couple of steps, were four ladies playing a game with ivory counters. They sat round a table and a bright fire was burning in an open hearth. They were young and pretty, except an older woman whose expression was cold and forbidding. Their dresses were made of stiff brocade, and their pointed bodices were embroidered with tiny flowers. On their heads they wore little lace caps, and I saw golden hair peeping out from one headdress. Each wore a narrow lace tucker round her neck, and rings glittered on white hands that threw the dice. All this I saw in the moment I stood transfixed at the door. Then a little spaniel rushed across the room and they turned and stared at me with startled eyes. They were as amazed as I, and sprang to their feet, yet there was never a sound. The older lady rose and I caught a glimpse of her scarlet shoe as she came towards me, frowning with hands outstretched as if to hold me.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I muttered, and quickly I shut the door, my heart pounding, and my hands trembling. I thought I had stumbled on some grand visitors of Aunt Tissie's, but then I saw there were other doors along the landing which I had not seen before. I felt caught in a net, and I opened one with desperation. I stopped dead, for a couple of stairs descended to a long, low-ceilinged passage. A maid-servant wearing a round, white cap carried a tray and knocked on a door to the right. I saw the heavy carvings over the doorway as she entered. Then a servant-man carried another tray to the left and disappeared. A bitter-sweet smell of spices and pungent herbs came to me, but there was never a sound of doors shutting or footsteps. I closed the door and went back to the landing, feeling rather sick and not daring to open another of those mysterious doors.
Then Aunt Tissie came thumping upstairs.
‘I couldn't find the room,’ I faltered, and I ran to her and took her warm hand in mine.
‘Couldn't you find it, Penelope?’ Aunt Tissie was surprised. ‘Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face. Here it is, and here is the rug lying on my bed.’ She threw open the door and I saw Aunt Tissie's large, bare room with lime-washed walls and a great wooden wardrobe. The window was wide open, and in front of it was an old dressing-table with a pair of wig stands and pewter candlesticks, but there was no sign of the strange company I had just seen.
I couldn't believe my eyes and I stood in the doorway, not venturing to cross the threshold.
‘Aunt Tissie. I opened a door and saw some ladies sitting in a room. Who were they?’ I whispered, shy to speak about it as if I done something amiss.
She started. ‘You saw them? You've seen them?’
She looked at me with astonishment and then drew me into [sic] her arms. Down below in the yard I could hear Uncle Barney thumping and banging with his whip end, impatient to be off. But my aunt took no notice.
‘It's the secret of Thackers,’ she said very quietly. ‘They lived here once, my dear, and some say they live here now. I've never seen them, nor has Uncle Barnabas, but my own mother saw them when she was a child, and her mother before her. My mother once told me about them, but nobody has mentioned them since, and that's fifty years since I heard. She said they sat round a table playing some game, and sometimes she saw other things but she didn't tell me all.’
‘They weren't ghosts,’ I cried eagerly. ‘They were real, quite alive like you and me.’
‘Yes, my dear, I know. They are the people who once lived here. Now, never say a word to anybody, for I wouldn't have it talked about, and nobody but yourself living has seen them, and maybe you'll never catch sight of 'em again.’
[mysteriously] Mmm. Maybe indeed. Or maybe she will. So that's A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley.
Yes, what... one of the things I love about that... I love how simple the slipping into the other time is: she's confused, she opens a door and there are those women. And then she can smell the spices later on but there's no sound. I think that's... that... for some reason that really... that's very strong. That gives me a very strong impression of what Penelope is experiencing. I think that's... yeah, [musing] mmm, it's a really interesting choice and it works very well. Later on sound does come in and then there's that feeling of [gasping breath] really entering the world. Oh, it's a wonderful book. A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley.
Right. Now, the two ghost books. Let's dispose of them. Both wonderful books but both books that I have a limited memory of and, not having them here, I have nothing to jog my memory.
During the 180th Page One Martin Zaltz Austwick gave me Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle. The thing that I remember loving about that book was the description of this game that the main character is... is in charge of essentially. People write to him. It's a fantasy game so he's... there's a situation... there's a scenario and people write to him - which... I mean, that by itself is wonderful - and he goes through... I think he has a filing cabinet full of things that can happen or places or parts of the game and he picks out one and he either copies it or... I don't know. Anyway, he sends it back to them. And that's the next bit. So it's a bit like... yeah, it's a bit like a long drawn-out interactive book, essentially. But I like... Yeah, I like the technology of it. I like the tactile nature of that - that it is pieces of paper. A piece of paper arrives and a piece of paper is sent back. I think that's great. And then that added to the... the game itself, which is beautifully described and sounds wonderful.
I've myself recently been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. I don't know if I have mentioned that before. I'm about to start a new... what's it called? C... Campaign, I think. Yeah, I'm about to [laughing] start a new campaign with somebody that is a friend of mine and then some people that he knows. It's very exciting. I have to create a character in my mind. Anyway. So, yeah, that's... that kind of imaginative, collaborative game playing is becoming a little more familiar to me.
Okay, so that was Martin Zaltz Austwick. In the 109th Page One I had a conversation with Martin's wife Helen Zaltzman. So both of those conversations happened in the flat that they were living in somewhere near Crystal Palace, I think, in London. They are both podcasters and had wonderful equipment that we used. That was very exciting.
Helen gave me Irma [/ɜːmə/] Voth - or Irma [/ɪəmə/] Voth - by Miriam Toews. I have l... probably, yeah, a vaguer memory of Irma Voth than I do have Wolf In White Van but that isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it. [increasing noise of train passing] I do remember that I loved it. I think it had a beautiful atmosphere, that novel. Goodness it's noisy today. So the rain has stopped but, yeah, now we have massive train noises. And there was some kind of plane earlier, wasn't there. Anyway. Yeah, so Irma Voth... Yeah, gorgeous atmosphere. It's set, I think, in Mexico among.... oh goodness.... Mennonites? [train noise fades to nothing] Anyway, yeah. So that's about a... I guess, a rebellious daughter and a film crew, I think. And then at some point they go to Mexico City and there's a... there's a sit-in happening, I think. Anyway. Beautiful book. Absolutely gorgeous. Very beautifully written. That much I do remember even if I don't remember the details of it. Yeah, very much, I think, about families and traditions and how one self-actualises, I suppose - how one finds oneself and makes one's peace with what one's found.
Okay, so those are the ghost books. Now onto the two...
[page turning]
... other books that I have to talk about for this episode. These are both books of collections of poetry.
For the 110th Page One I went to Nancy Crane's house near Camberwell, I think, in London and we sat in her front room. It was a gorgeous day. It was... It was cold and sunny and Nancy had a fire going in the hearth. And we talked about wonderful books. Yeah, it was a very enjoyable... I think it was a morning conversation. Yeah. Anyway.
Nancy gave me The Complete Poems of Elizabeth Bishop. It's a gorgeous book. Very beautiful image on the front cover. I didn't know anything about Elizabeth Bishop before. I've come across her name in other contexts since. Most recently because I was looking up the Brazilian royal family - the pretenders to the Brazilian throne or the throne of Brazil. I can't remember [laughing] why I was doing that. But, in any case, her name came up because she lived for a while, I think, in the... in the city that... the city, I think, where the... the Summer Palace of the Emperors of Brazil is or was?
But yeah. So. I think I... Yeah, [I'm] talking about lots of things that I have said before on the podcast. I... Yeah, I definitely have said before on the podcast that I don't always get on very well with poetry. I don't get on very well with all of these poems but there are many, many poems in this collection that I loved. And I could easily have read you three or four of them now but I'm... yeah, I'm aware that this is already going to be a long episode with everything that I have to talk about and all of the things that I didn't have to talk about but did. I'm just going to read you one poem. It's called Insomnia. This is on page 70 of the... of the book, which is published by Chatto & Windus and it's altogether 276 pages long. Insomnia is from a collection called A Cold Spring, which was published in 1955 and is dedicated "TO DR. ANNY BAUMANN".
Insomnia
The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
By the universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well
into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.
Yeah, I find that wonderful. It has a really... I mean, I'm not... Yeah, I'm not a connoisseur of poetry but it has to be a very interesting shape and all kinds of awkward stops and suspensions. And a... and a parenthesis, which... Yeah, it... it intrigues me and I find it very beautiful. And [laughing] also I am somebody who very often finds it difficult to sleep and so that speaks to me in that sense as well.
Okay, I am going to read a second poem for you. I left the bookmark in and I can't resist. This is called Song For The Rainy Season, which is on page 101 of this book. And it's from a collection called Questions Of Travel, which was published in 1965 and is dedicated: "FOR LOTA DE MACEDO SUARES". This is... So the first section of that collection is called Brazil and this is in that section.
Song for the Rainy Season
Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding them both,
house and rock,
in a private cloud.
At night, on the roof,
blind drops crawl
and the ordinary brown
owl gives us proof
he can count:
five times - always five -
he stamps and takes off
after the fat frogs that,
shrilling for love,
clamber and mount.
House, open house
to the white dew
and the milk-white sunrise
kind to the eyes,
to membership
of silver fish, mouse,
bookworms,
big moths; with a wall
for the mildew's
ignorant map;
darkened and tarnished
by the warm touch
of the warm breath,
maculate, cherished,
rejoice! For a later
era will differ.
(O difference that kills,
or intimidates, much
of all our small shadowy
life!) Without water
the great rock will stare
unmagnetized, bare
no longer wearing
rainbows or rain,
the forgiving air
and the high fog gone;
the owls will move on
and the several
waterfalls shrivel
in the steady sun.
There you go. And that has some words:
Sítio da Alcobaçinha
Fazenda Samambaia
Petrópolis
I think Petrópolis is the name of the city that I was talking about - the Imperial summer city.
I love that. And that's a poem that I feel like if I'd studied it at school teachers would have talked about rhymes and half rhymes and assonance and sibilance and I don't know what else and alliteration and the shape of the stanzas and so on and none of it would have meant anything to me. And here it all does somehow. I love the repetitions. I love the lists. I think they're just... They're very small lists and beautiful. I love... I love the word “maculate”. I think that's just lovely. Yeah, I love the... the... the half rhyme - is it a half rhyme? - of “fog” and “rock”, which is almost... I mean, there's a... there's a fogginess to that. It's not quite clear. Yeah. “Rain-, rainbow-ridden”, “bromelias”, “lint” and “cling”. All the... yeah, these sounds. I just love them. And such a beautiful set of images as well. And the knowledge that this world that she's painting will pass and some of the life that is there will go or will die. [appreciatively] Mmm. So much wrapped up in that poem.
[page turning]
I like all of the books that I'm talking about today. The last book that I have to talk to you about today - take a breath, this is the end of the episode - was given to me by Griffyn Gilligan during the 111th Page One, which we recorded here in my kitchen. Griffyn gave me Dream Police by Dennis Cooper.
I had been aware of Dennis Cooper because of another book that I gave to Isabelle Schoelcher during the somethingth Page One. I don't remember which number that is. It was called Guide [/giːd/]. I think it was, for some reason, a French translation of that book. I assume it's called Guide [/gaɪd/] in English.
Dennis Cooper, I... yeah, I find him very interesting. He writes - in here at any rate - about sex and death and suicide and sex work and youth and dissolution and destruction and disillusionment. These poems remind me - and I suppose, yeah, the the other book that I read by him - it all reminds me of the work of Larry Clark - the films and the photographs that I've seen by him - in... in its constant circling around adolescent sexuality. But I suppose where Larry Clark, I think, is an observer of adolescent heterosexuality, Denis Cooper is very much a participant and the sexuality that he is interested in is adolescent homosexuality - male adolescent homosexuality. And these are... they're memories and projections and reports of experience and fantasies - and nightmares also.
There's a wonderful poem here called First Sex - which is on pages 20 and 21 of this edition - which is about... yeah, the disillusionment of having sex for the first time and it not being anything like the fantasy of sex that the... that the narrator of the poem has had before - or has enjoyed before - and the last few lines of it go... So after the... after the guy he's had sex with has gone.... Let me... Let me just read the last three stanzas here on page 21:
He rolls onto his back,
face raw and wet as fat
like it has been shaken from nightmares.
I don't know how to please this face.
Tomorrow when he has made breakfast
and gone, I will sweep
the mound of porno from my closet,
put a match to its lies.
I will wait in my bed
as I did before, a thought ajar,
and sex will slip into my room
like a white tiger.
I think that's a... yeah, again, wonderful juxtaposition of images. The... The disappointing, perhaps slightly repulsive reality of the other body and then the imaginary sex that can come when you're alone. [appreciative] Mmm. I think that's, yeah, just wonderful.
The poem that I meant to read to you - and will read to you - is called Swimmer. Let me... So this is published by Grove Press and it is 134 pages long. This poem... I was going to say it doesn't have to do with sex but there is... there is sex inside it I think. It's about death - youth and death and... Yeah.
Swimmer
When a small girl
explores the lake with a mask
she rubs against Eric,
months there
gliding the depths,
arms straight out like a plane.
His trunks nine times too small.
Now when he drifts ashore
girls will put out their eyes
rather than toss him
a look like dreaming.
Monday Dave calls me
at a party,
kissing my stupid mouth
with the news.
As I wake Tuesday
I lie for hours
thinking of death,
then push myself to my cold feet.
When men pull Eric
out of the lake
the water follows him up
like a long gown.
Oh it's... I just... I love that. I think that's... [considering] Hmm. It's pointed and painful and also, yeah, it's so efficient, so economical. And that... ah, the turn he gives when... You know when I was reading this yesterday... I was reading through this collection [to] try and decide what I wanted to read from and I'd forgotten this poem. And it starts off, this small girl rubbing against Eric and you think: “Oh, is there some... something going on there?” and then you find out that Eric has been “months there gliding in the depths, arms straight out like a plane”. It's grim and too intimate and... and yeah. And the fact that then on Monday Dave calls him at party “kissing my stupid mouth with the news”. So violent. How does he make the word “kissing” so violent? Oh, and then the long gown that follows Eric up out of the water. So many... Yeah, so many images, so many... [appreciative] mmm... things about that poem that I like. Yeah.
So Dream Police. The Dream Police, sorry. The Dream Police, which is subtitled Selected Poems, 1969 - 1993, by Dennis Cooper - the prolific Dennis Cooper. I don't know if he's still writing his blog but that was, I think, something he did... every day? Griffyn talks about it in the 111th Page One.
Okay. Thank you so much for being with me today and staying with me. One thing that I've definitely forgotten to say today is that I discovered, climbing up onto my wooden IKEA steps to reach the bookshelves, that it has developed a squeak. And I've been ever so still so it hasn't squeaked but let's see if I can make it squeak just to give you a sense of what that noise - it's been an episode of noises, hasn't it - what that noise sounds like. So...
[sound of wood rubbing against wood]
Yeah. There we go.
[sound of wood rubbing against wood]
Yeah. Can you hear it?
[sound of wood rubbing against wood]
Nightmare. [laughs] I mean, I'm trying to keep the extraneous noises to a minimum and that just... yeah. [tuts] One more thing to pay attention to. Right. Anyway. So that is it. Sorry. I'm done. I'm done. Thank you. You can... You can head home now. Speak to you all again very soon. Bye.
Jingle
Thank you for listening to Page One. For more information about the podcast, please go to pageonepodcast.com.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]