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(This episode is marked as explicit because of strong language and sexual imagery.)
(Background noise might make this episode a challenging listen.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake, published in 1999 by Vintage; cover illustration © Mervyn Peake.
For the 23rd Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is at a Friday night British Museum Late with performer and barrister Sarah Le Fevre. A previous attempt to record this edition didn’t come off so the two of them jumped at the chance to meet and talk a second time, and to exchange another couple of books. Sarah is on fine form and the new books are just as perfectly chosen as the original two.
Sum by David Eagleman is also discussed in Page One 113, Page One 165 and Page One 187.
Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake is also discussed in Page One 165.
Some more of Mervyn Peake’s illustration can be seen in the episode image to Page One 49.
This episode was recorded at the British Museum for London Fields Radio.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 7th May, 2013.
Book listing:
Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (trans. Natasha Wemmer)
Sum by David Eagleman
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake
Links:
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to Page One On The Run. I'm Charles Adrian and I'm here in the British Museum with Sarah Le Fevre for the 34th Page One. This is the 23rd Second Hand Book Factory. I'm going to start with a bit of Judy Garland. This is A Foggy Day.
Music
[A Foggy Day by Judy Garland]
Charles Adrian
So that was... that was Judy Garland singing A Foggy Day live at Carnegie Hall. I chose that because, obviously, we're in the British Museum, which has not at all lost its charm. We're at British Museum Late. Is that what it's called?
Sarah Le Fevre
I think so yes.
Charles Adrian
[indistinct] take that out of my ear...
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] Oh right. Okay.
Charles Adrian
... because therwise I'll feel like... because it's... I can hear myself strangely [indistinct].
Sarah Le Fevre
I'll just do what you do. So that's fine.
Charles Adrian
Good.
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
It's nice to be back here with you, Sarah.
Sarah Le Fevre
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
I think... we were talking about sabotage. I think possibly a psychoanalyst might... might diagnose self-sabotage - from either of us, actually. I mean, I... Yeah, we've recorded this once before.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes, we have.
Charles Adrian
And I recorded it badly. The levels were wrong. So we've come back together and instead of doing... instead of, sort of, pretending, as I've done in the past, that we're just going to start from scratch, I said: “Let's... Let's take the books that we exchanged last time and talk about them.”
Sarah Le Fevre
[affirmative] Mmm. Mmm.
Charles Adrian
So this is a slightly different Page One.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
But they were such great books.
Sarah Le Fevre
They were fantastic books. I was fantastically pleased with my choice for you. And I've been amazingly pleased with what you gave me.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Tell me how you have found it.
Sarah Le Fevre
I have loved it. It's a book called Dirty Havana Trilogy. It's by a Cuban writer called Pedro Juan Gutierrez. It tells me on the cover that it's grotesquely compelling. And that is... that really is what it is.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Sarah Le Fevre
It's very... I mean it's filthy and it's... and it's sexy and it's dirty and it's... It just doesn't stop. It's page after page of encounter and filth and trash and little glimmers of hope but those are, sort of, quickly squashed back in their... back in their place again.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You see, I actually... I read it quite a while ago. Does he...
Sarah Le Fevre
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... keep finding ways to make little bits and pieces of money?
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes, that's right.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Sarah Le Fevre
In, sort of, variously... variously humiliating or criminal or hopeless or, sort of, pathetic and bathetic ways...
Sarah and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Sarah Le Fevre
... and it's... Yes. And it's Cuba post... well, immediately post-revolution and what that really meant on the ground for people who were living some kind of dream.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Sarah Le Fevre
Or living somebody else's kind of dream. Somebody who'd obviously been very successfully - he'd plainly been a journalist, he plainly has a way with words - and has fallen really from grace by the time the book starts, although the book isn't really entirely chronological so it's a little bit difficult to tell exactly where you are at any one time. But it is... it's a... it's a, sort of, tapestry of... of lives. But, yeah, you couldn't have pitched it better. I love it. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Fantastic. I'm really... I'm really pleased that you liked it so much.
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] I really love it. Yeah, I really love it.
Charles Adrian
It was a bit of an... It was an instinctive choice in my... I mean, I was just... I was doing some stretching on my bedroom floor and I looked up and I saw it in front of me...
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughs] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... on the shelf and I thought: “That's what I'm going to give Sarah.”
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Because I'd been thinking about it for a long time. I hadn't... I couldn't think of something obvious that I wanted to give you because there are lots of things that I think you'd already have read or that, you know, you'd like but not in a special way.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And then I thought: “Oh, I think... I think you're the kind of person who would like this.” And I obviously got that right.
Sarah Le Fevre
You got it absolutely right. It, sort of, pierced straight through to so many things that I love about reading and books and experiences. And you couldn't have known that I should have been to Cuba last year...
Charles Adrian
No! That's right.
Sarah Le Fevre
... am about, hopefully, to go this year. You couldn't have known that. So there was something there. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Let's just thank the World Soul...
Sarah Le Fevre
That's it.
Charles Adrian
... the Oversoul. Why don't you read me something from it?
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes.
Charles Adrian
You don't have to read the first page...
Sarah Le Fevre
No, I don't.
Charles Adrian
... but you can read me something.
Sarah Le Fevre
No, I don't. But I might as well read the first page, I suppose.
Charles Adrian
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Sarah Le Fevre
New Things In My Life.
Early that morning, there was a pink postcard sticking out of my mailbox, from Mark Pawson in London. In big letters he had written, “June 5, 1993, some bastard stole the front wheel of my bicycle.” A year later, and that business was still bothering him. I thought about the little club near Mark's apartment, where every night Rodolfo would strip and do a sexy dance while I banged out weird tropical-improvisational music on bongo drums, shaking rattles, making guttural noises, trying anything else I could think of. We had fun, drank free beer, and got paid twenty-five pounds a night. Too bad it couldn't have lasted longer. But black dancers were a hot commodity, and Rodolfo left for Liverpool to teach modern dance. I was broke, and I stayed at Mark's until I got bored and came back.
Now I was training myself to take nothing seriously. A man's allowed to make lots of small mistakes, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the mistakes are big ones and they weigh him down, his only solution is to stop taking himself seriously. It's the only way to avoid suffering - suffering, prolonged, can be fatal.
I stuck the postcard up behind the door, put on a tape of Armstrong's “Snake Rag,” felt much better, and stopped thinking. I don't have to think while I'm listening to music. But jazz like this cheers me up too and makes me feel like dancing. I had a cup of tea for breakfast, took a shit, and [sic] read some gay poems by Allen Ginsberg, and was amazed by “Sphincter” and “Personals ad.” I hope my good old asshole holds out. But I couldn't be amazed for long, because two very young friends of mine showed up, wanting to know if I thought it would be a good idea to launch a raft from Cabo San Antonio heading for Cabo Catoche, or whether it would be better to take off north directly for Miami. Those were the days of the exodus, the summer of ’94. The day before, a girlfriend had called me to say, “What'll we do now that all the men and kids are leaving? It's going to be hard.” Things weren't like that, exactly. Lots of people were staying, the ones who couldn't live anywhere else.
And it goes on. Sorry, I've read more than a page because, actually, I, kind of... It's a... It's a, kind of, mood book...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Sarah Le Fevre
... and the whole book is a mood book...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Sarah Le Fevre
... and when you're reading this book - and that perhaps doesn't really... Well, it's a good beginning, it doesn't catch really the filth of it but... [laughs]
Charles Adrian
It plunges us into a sort of atmosphere, though.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes.
Charles Adrian
I love that it starts with this postcard from elsewhere.
Sarah Le Fevre
Absolutely.
Charles Adrian
And this bicycle wheel...
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I mean, that is... the bicycle tyre being stolen is... is... it's a good image.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes, it is a good image and the dancing and the sex...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes! Yes!
Sarah Le Fevre
... and the drink and the can't that just carry on forever...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Sarah Le Fevre
... in this nightclub world? But it has been quite odd. You know, if you're, sort of, reading it occasionally at the back of the court or...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Sarah Le Fevre
... waiting for a judge to come in and you, kind of, look up...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Sarah Le Fevre
... out of this world of sleaze. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yes!
Sarah Le Fevre
“Whoa, where am I?” [laughs] So thank you very much.
Charles Adrian
Oh, my pleasure. And thank you for the book that you gave to me, which is Sum by David Eagleman. This is a, kind of... I mentioned this to somebody that I was doing a workshop with recently and he said: “Oh, yes, yes, this is a kind of... it's a kind of thought experiment”. He'd read it and he'd seen it in that light. And I agree. It is a kind of thought experiment. But I did like it. Now, somewhere it says... oh yeah, on the front... Brian Eno. There's a quote from him saying: “Every story is a new heaven”. I think... I think it's actually not true. I think every... every imagining he has of the afterlife is... is of a kind of hell.
Sarah Le Fevre
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
He always sees the afterlife turning into something awful. There's something awful for him about living forever, I think.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes. I've seen it more as a... as a series of mantras as to how to live this life better...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Sarah Le Fevre
... and how to appreciate this life for what it is...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Sarah Le Fevre
... more.
Charles Adrian
Yes. It is... I mean, most of them are a reliving of this life or a re-imagining of...
Sarah Le Fevre
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... how this life works, aren't they?
Sarah Le Fevre
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
They're very... One thing I noticed, obviously, is that - especially as you get towards the end - they become very... it's very much a male heterosexual talking.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes.
Charles Adrian
He's a man. He's married to a woman. He has children. That... And so it's interesting. It beco... It starts off very general and I found it very easy to slip myself into the you and then more and more I felt like I'm not the you actually. There's something else going on.
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] Mmm. That's a good point and that's not something I picked up. Although the stories that I found myself going back to - because I have gone back to it a number of times - are the ones towards the beginning.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Sarah Le Fevre
The short, quick flashes of...
Charles Adrian
They are, really... I think they're really... I'm going to read just a paragraph, just the first paragraph of one of the early ones. It's called Metomorphosis. It just... It's... It's, I suppose, a thought that I've had before but I liked... I liked seeing it here.
Sarah Le Fevre
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
It's beautiful.
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] Yes, it is.
Charles Adrian
It really just encapsulates... Yes! That is... That is, in a way... I remember, when I studied Latin at school, my Latin teacher would say - this is for... this is for the... for the... for the Romans: That's... That's what they're talking about when they talk about immortality.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes.
Charles Adrian
They're simply talking about my name being repeated in the future.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes.
Charles Adrian
That was wonderful. Now we're going to listen to - rather appropriately, I think - Leonard Cohen...
Sarah Le Fevre
Oh, my favourite.
Charles Adrian
... singing Tonight Will Be Fine.
Sarah Le Fevre
Oh, and one of my favourite songs. Fantastic
Music
[Tonight Will Be Fine by Leonard Cohen]
Charles Adrian
Oh! So that was... that was Leonard Cohen singing Tonight Will Be Fine. It's beautiful.
Sarah Le Fevre
[luxuriating] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Now my book - my new book for...
Sarah Le Fevre
Oh, yes.
Charles Adrian
... for Sarah... So, again, I looked through and I thought: “[frustrated sound]” Again, there are lots of things I could have given you - any number of Whodunnits. And then I thought: “No”. I saw this yesterday and I thought: “This, I think, is going to be appropriate”. One of the things I remember you saying to me recently about... so one of the reasons you like acting - and I haven't asked you to describe yourself. I'm just going to write down: “Sarah Le Fevre, performer... barrister...”
Sarah Le Fevre
I'd much rather you didn't. I don't really like to describing myself so it would be better if you didn't ask me.
Charles Adrian
So “Sarah Le Fevre...”
Sarah Le Fevre
You can just say what you want instead.
Charles Adrian
Exactly.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
That's what I'm going to do.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] So, anyway...
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... one of the things... I remember you saying that one of the reasons you liked acting was that it gave you the chance to say things - I'm paraphrasing here - but it gave you the chance to say things and behave in ways that would have been completely unacceptable at home.
Sarah Le Fevre
Did I say that? [laughs]
Charles Adrian
You said it - not in so many words but you...
Sarah and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... you said something about...
Sarah Le Fevre
Are you sure you didn't say that?
Charles Adrian
We agreed that...
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... that was something that we shared. [laughs] I'm not putting words in your mouth.
Sarah Le Fevre
No, no.
Charles Adrian
I do remember you saying... No, what specifically you were talking about... specifically, you were talking about was say... like, being able to say shocking things.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And... And I thought: “Yes, no, I d... I identify with this feeling...
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... the idea”. And so I've got you a book which is called Good Behaviour by Molly Keane. And it's a very nice little book. It's not going to... I don't think it's going to rip you open in any way at all but it's a rather nice story about this family - it's a, kind of, revenge story - but it is about a family where you are just expected to behave correctly.
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughing] Yes.
Charles Adrian
And I like that a lot. And the first page is rather wonderful. It, sort of, starts at the end and then works backwards, if you see what I mean.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yep.
Charles Adrian
So I think you get quite a nice idea of the atmosphere from the [indistinct]
One.
Rose smelt the air, considering what she smelt; a miasma of unspoken criticism and disparagement fogged the distance between us. I knew she ached to censure my cooking, but through the years, I have subdued her. Those wide shoulders and swinging hips were once parts of a winged quality she had - a quality reduced and corrected now, I'm glad to say.
‘I wonder are you wise, Miss Aroon, to give her the rabbit?’
‘And why not?’ I can use the tone of voice which keeps people in their places and usually silences any interference from Rose. Not this time. ‘
Rabbit sickens her. Even Master Hubert's first with his first gun. She couldn't get it down.’
‘That's a very long time ago. And I've often known her to enjoy rabbit since then.’
‘She never liked rabbit.’
‘Especially when she thought it was chicken.’
‘You couldn't deceive her, Miss Aroon.’ She picked up the tray. I snatched it back. I knew precisely what she would say when she put it down on Mummie's bed. I had set the tray myself. I don't trust Rose. I don't trust anybody. Because I like things to be right. The tray did look charming: bright, with a crisp clean cloth and a shine on everything. I lifted the silver lid off the hot plate to smell those quenelles in a cream sauce. There was just a hint of bay leaf and black pepper, not a breath of the rabbit foundation. Anyhow, what could be more delicious and delicate than a baby rabbit? Especially after it has...
There you go.
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughing] Thank you very much. I don't think... I mean, well, obviously there could be books further worlds apart than these two books but...
Charles Adrian
Yes. [laughs]
Sarah Le Fevre
These are quite a long away. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] They're quite far apart but I think it will resonate in some ways.
Sarah Le Fevre
Thank you very much. Yes, I think it probably will. I'm looking forward to that.
Charles Adrian
It is marvelous fun.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes. Because it is not a book that I would have picked up, I think, on my own so...
Charles Adrian
Right. And I wouldn't normally.
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] The other I might have done, you see.
Charles Adrian
Yes, yes.
Sarah Le Fevre
I might have... I might have got to this. But this I don't think I would have done and that's even... that's, in some ways, even better.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Good! Then I'm doing my job...
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... correctly, I think. Yeah, no, I... This is from my local cheap bookshop, I think, and I...
Sarah Le Fevre
I'm sure the other one was as well. That's what you told me.
Charles Adrian
Oh that's right, it was.
Sarah Le Fevre
No expense spared.
Charles Adrian
Great. Have you...? You've ripped the label off, haven't you? It had a price tag on.
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughs] Maybe I have, yes, possibly.
Charles Adrian
You have indeed. It was £2.99 if I remember.
Sarah Le Fevre
It was polluting the image [laughs] that I wanted before.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, no, when I say “cheap bookshop”, what I mean is...
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... ideas fund.
Sarah and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Sarah Le Fevre
Is that what you meant?
Charles Adrian
Let's listen to...
Sarah Le Fevre
All right, sorry. Yes.
Charles Adrian
... Angoisse by Serge Gainsbourg. So this is my choice but it's mashed up with a choice of yours...
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughs] [indistinct]
Charles Adrian
[laughs] ... which is a little bit of Under Milkwood and we'll... I'm going to put that on whilst hordes of foreign schoolchildren come past us.
Music
[Angoisse by Serge Gainsbourg x Under Milkwood (excerpt) by Dylan Thomas voiced by Richard Burton, Raymond Llewellyn and Rachel Thomas]
Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
It is. It's London Fields Radio. I'm here with Sarah Le Fevre in the... in the court. Is it called the court? Or the courtyard? What's it called?
Sarah Le Fevre
I've got no idea.
Charles Adrian
Of the British Museum, anyway. And we've just discovered that... that Sarah did actually play Mrs... I've just discovered... I shouldn't say that was mutual discovery because you knew that, didn't you, already?
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughing] I did know, yes.
Charles Adrian
You played Mrs Pugh.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes, I did play Mrs Pugh.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] That's really very appropriate.
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughing] It was, yes.
Charles Adrian
Amongst other things. Give... Give me your book.
Sarah Le Fevre
All right. Well, I'm a bit worried that you're going to know this book but I actually don't really care.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I recognise the... the.. the edition. I mean, I've got... I've got several...
Sarah Le Fevre
Oh.
Charles Adrian
... of those Virago Modern Classics.
Sarah Le Fevre
Have you? This is...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I love them. I think they're great.
Sarah Le Fevre
This is Vintage Classics.
Charles Adrian
Vintage. Sorry. Not Virago.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes.
Charles Adrian
But it's by Virago, isn't it?
Sarah Le Fevre
I don't know but do you...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No.
Sarah Le Fevre
... is this a book that you know?
Charles Adrian
No, it isn't. It isn't.
Sarah Le Fevre
Hooray! That's fantastic. This is a book by Mervyn Peake called Mr Pye and I think it's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] He wrote... So he wrote...
Sarah Le Fevre
Very famous for the Gormanghast trilogy.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Which I absolutely adore.
Sarah Le Fevre
Oh, well that's fabulous...
Charles Adrian
It's wonderful.
Sarah Le Fevre
... because Mr Pye is, for me, much better than Gormanghast.
Charles Adrian
How lovely.
Sarah Le Fevre
It's much lighter. It's much funnier.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Sarah Le Fevre
It's somewhere between a fairy tale - in the way that fairy tales are sort of magical and quite dark and dreadful things happen in them... Like in the original Rapunzel. Rapunzel was pregnant and didn't know that she was... Anyway that's another...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah, yeah. And like the Red Shoes lady sort of...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh yes. Mmm hmm.
Sarah Le Fevre
... danced her feet into stumps and that sort of thing. So you know, it's... it's fairytale for black and for white.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Sarah Le Fevre
And it's sort of magical real as well. And it's an utterly, utterly enchanting, very funny story. And it's set in the island of Sark, which I love because I used to spend my birthdays there.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, which I haven't been to. Right. I had an English teacher who used to want to take us on reading holidays to Sark.
Sarah Le Fevre
I'm not surprised. It's a wonderful, wonderful place.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm. It sounded [indistinct] magical.
Sarah Le Fevre
I see it's called itself a fable on the back. I hadn't noticed that before. But it is a kind of fable, except it's so grounded in the details...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Sarah Le Fevre
... the, sort of, nuts and bolts of Sark. It's magic. I think you will love it.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, I can't wait.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah, I can't wait for you to read it. And I just hope you love it as much as I love it. I think it's beautiful. So should I read you the first page of it?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Please do. Please do.
Sarah Le Fevre
The first page, strictly speaking, is that. I can read it a little bit longer than that. Or why don't you stop me when you've heard enough of it because...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Okay. You should describe the picture.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yes, this is a picture of a short round man. And he is described as... I think, as being a little bit like a penguin in the book. And he is.
Charles Adrian
He looks like a penguin.
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] You can, sort of, see he looks like a penguin. And I think Peake did the illustrations as well.
Charles Adrian
He did for Gormenghast, didn't he...
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] Yes.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... so it wouldn't surprise me.
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] So I think this is him. And he's on a boat and that's almost certainly Sark away in the distance.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm. Okay.
Sarah Le Fevre
And we have Mr Pye's back facing us because he...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Sarah Le Fevre
... in his penguin stance, is looking away past...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] With a, sort of, pork pie hat.
Sarah Le Fevre
With a pork pie hat and some very old fashioned, sort of, boating, kind of, equipment around him.
Charles Adrian
Oh lovely.
Sarah Le Fevre
And yes, so it's obviously the beginning of a journey.
Charles Adrian
I think... Do you know what I'm going to say?
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I think you should just read me the first page.
Sarah Le Fevre
I will. I'll keep it very strictly that.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Sarah Le Fevre
But I'm going to require you, as soon as you finish this - talking to me - just to read the next few lines after it because you need to know what they are...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I will. I will. Okay.
Sarah Le Fevre
... and I want to see your face when you read them.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Sarah Le Fevre
So.
ONE
‘Sark.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the man in the little quayside hut. ‘A return fare. Six shillings.’
‘A single, my friend,’ said Mr Harold Pye.
The man in the little hut looked up and frowned at the unfamiliar face.
‘Did you say a “single”, sir?’
‘I believe so.’
The man in the hut frowned again as though he were still not satisfied. Why should this fat little stranger be so sure he wanted a ‘single’? He was obviously only a visitor. A return...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Thank you very much.
Sarah Le Fevre
It's my pleasure. And it's real... my real pleasure to give you this if you haven't read it before.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm. I love it.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Wonderful. Oh no, yeah, I'm just flicking through. I like some of these drawings. They look fantastic.
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] Oh, the... the illustrations are wonderful.
Charles Adrian
Oh, thank you so much.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah
Charles Adrian
And thank you very much for coming back to do this again, Sarah.
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughing] No, it's my pleasure.
Charles Adrian
This was so much fun...
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] Friday night in the museum
Charles Adrian
Friday night in the museum.
Sarah Le Fevre
[laughing] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
This is absolutely lovely. I do like hanging out in the British Museum.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yup.
Charles Adrian
You more or less introduced me to this.
Sarah Le Fevre
Oh, really?
Charles Adrian
I mean I've... I'd come to the British Museum...
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... before but it's not somewhere that I would have dropped into...
Sarah Le Fevre
No.
Charles Adrian
... and you and I have been a couple of times.
Sarah Le Fevre
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
So thank you very much. We're going to go out on...
Sarah Le Fevre
[speaking over] Well, it's my pleasure.
Charles Adrian
... what is, yeah, it's... it's one of my favourite tracks now. I was aware of it before but you've really brought it to my notice. It's Labirinth...
Sarah Le Fevre
Oh!
Charles Adrian
... and Express Yourself.
Sarah Le Fevre
Great. I am definitely listening to that.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Music
[Express Yourself by Labirinth]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]