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Episode image is a detail from the cover of Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary by M. R. James, published in 1959 by Penguin Books.
Incorrectly identified at beginning of the recording as the 30th edition of Page One, this is indeed the 25th Second Hand Book Factory. This week, the poet Tim Wells has invited Charles Adrian to the Betsy Trotwood in Clerkenwell, where they sit in the upstairs room and talk live poetry, Victorian detectives and ghosts who aren’t there. A well-spent morning.
You can read more about Tim Wells’ taste in music here.
You can find out more about Bang Said The Gun here.
Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary by M. R. James is also discussed in Page One 165.
This episode was recorded at the Betsy Trotwood in Clerkenwell 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: 21st May, 2013.
Book listing:
The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes – ed. Hugh Greene
At Swim Two Birds by Flan O’Brien
Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book from Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary by M. R. James
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. This is the 30th Page One. This is the 25th Second Hand Book Factory. I'm here on location in the Betsey Trotwood in Clerkenwell with Tim Wells.
Tim Wells
Hello Adrian. How are you?
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Hello Tim. I'm very well.
Tim Wells
Excellent.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Very nice to see you this morning.
Tim Wells
Indeed. We are on the run in a pub.
Charles Adrian
We are. We are. We're hiding upstairs. I'm going to start with... I'm going to start with a track. Now, I should explain to you, I really wanted to play Common People by Pulp for you...
Tim Wells
[laughing] Okay.
Charles Adrian
... because I thought that would fit quite nicely.
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
But then I thought, “Actually what I'd rather play is the B side”. Because I have the... I have a single that I bought in France...
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... of Common People and the B side is a track called Underwear. Do you know that one?
Tim Wells
Funnily enough I only heard that Pulp album last year for the first time.
Charles Adrian
Really?
Tim Wells
Honestly, yeah.
Charles Adrian
Well, there we go.
Tim Wells
Which... I liked it when I heard it but it's one of those things I just wouldn't [?] put off and everyone's going, “You'd love it! You'd love it!” and when I played it, I actually quite liked it.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. I only know these two tracks from that album but I love this one. This is Underwear by Pulp.
Tim Wells
[speaking over] Let's take it down.
Music
[Underwear by Pulp]
Charles Adrian
Okay, so that was... that was Underwear by Pulp. Just for you, Tim.
Tim Wells
Superb.
Charles Adrian
Something nice and lecherous [laughs]...
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... [indistinct] in the morning. So how... Tim Wells, how do you describe yourself?
Tim Wells
Five foot eight. Tanned. Handsome
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tim Wells
Blue eyes.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
Debonair.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Wonderful.
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
So do you have a number that anyone could call on if they're...? No, what... how do you...?
Tim and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
When I met you, I remember we... Well, I met you first at the Brautigan Book Club, didn't I?
Tim Wells
Yes, we were doing a gig together, weren't we, yes.
Charles Adrian
And then we met again at a workshop to try and help writers become more media savvy.
Tim Wells
With the lovely Francesca Beard.
Charles Adrian
With the lovely Francesca Beard, who I'm trying... I... like, slowly trying to encourage to do one of these Page Ones.
Tim Wells
She should.
Charles Adrian
She should. She's... She's one of these people who you email and you wait.
Tim Wells
Yes.
Tim and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
She's incredibly busy. But I w... yes. She... So she organised this wonderful workshop and I remember I was talking to, I think, you and other people about this whole notion of performance poetry...
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... and whether people call themselves performance poets anymore.
Tim Wells
I don't and never have. I'm actually very against the term ‘performance poetry’.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Uh huh.
Tim Wells
I personally think it's a term arts administrators use to keep...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Right.
Tim Wells
... to keep us nicely over there....
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Tim Wells
... rather than...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
... mixed up with everybody else.
Charles Adrian
It does.... It sounds... It always sounds like an irritating thing, to go and hear a performance poet. And it's not... And very ephemeral. Not very...
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... real, somehow.
Tim Wells
I mean, also, I think, if you look at the history of poetry, it's very much involved with people. When you... To go back to Homer and the Vikings and...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tim Wells
... Martial and Juvenal and all those kind of people. So... So it wasn't professors sat in towers.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Right. Right. Yeah. And that... And that... I mean, I got that impression.... So, the other week, I was... I saw you at Bang S... Bang Went The Gun.
Tim Wells
Yes, Bang Said The Gun in Borough.
Charles Adrian
It's Bang Said The Gun?
Tim Wells
It's Bang Said The Gun.
Charles Adrian
Yes, because I kept saying to myself Bang Said The Gun and I thought that...
Tim Wells
No, you were right.
Charles Adrian
... [I didn't know where] I got that. Okay. Good. And that's... I mean, that is so much fun. And it's...
Tim Wells
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... so rowdy and loud.
Tim Wells
That's... That's what I love about it, is the rowdiness...
Charles Adrian
Yeah!
Tim Wells
... and...
Charles Adrian
It works!
Tim Wells
... this enthusiasm and...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
It's a...
Charles Adrian
Exactly.
Tim Wells
... lovely thing to see, yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. And... But then, I thought, at the end of the evening, there were some girls who stood up and read some very touching poetry, I thought...
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... and that worked just as well.
Tim Wells
Well...
Charles Adrian
Because there was some comic stuff and then there was... you know, there's...
Tim Wells
All people have a range of emotions, which...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Tim Wells
... a lot of... certainly, say, stand up comedy - some of it... which... some of which is excellent but it's kind of a one trick pony.
Charles Adrian
It can be.
Tim Wells
You know.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
It's very often got the one gear.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tim Wells
I mean, there are people... Actually, you know, Simon Munnery and Stewart Lee are examples of people who are trying to take it other places but...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
... a lot of showbiz comedy is just joke, joke, joke and...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes, that's right. It's entertainment, isn't it. Yes.
Tim Wells
[speaking over] ... there's no range of emotion, which... which poetry can bring.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. And I was impressed that... that you could get a group... so, quite a rowdy group of people... They're just engaged. So you don't have to... Because I think there's a feeling in stand up that you have to keep the room laughing. Otherwise...
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... you've lost them. And I didn't feel that fear at the [Bang Said The Gun].
Tim Wells
Well, one of the things I enjoy doing poetry live is in the same poem you can actually get people to, kind of, hate you and then...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Tim Wells
... by the end of the poem love you.
Charles Adrian
Hmm. Yeah.
Tim Wells
And I always enjoy that shift.
Charles Adrian
Yes, yes.
Tim Wells
And you can work that.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Let's... Let's talk about the book that you've brought that you like.
Tim Wells
Okay! I bought this book last week, actually, and I've been loving it. It's a book of short stories. It's called The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes. So it's detective stories that were published in Victorian and Edwardian magazines at the same time as Conan Doyle.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh great. Yeah.
Tim Wells
I'm a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. I'm a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes man.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Tim Wells
So they're really... they're really exciting stories. I've been liking it a lot. And it's also one of the old Penguin...
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm.
Tim Wells
... green crime books, which, for a book nerd, is quite nice.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, I'm... I'm also a massive fan of the different Penguin editions and especially...
Tim Wells
[speaking over] Yeah, I've got loads...
Charles Adrian
... sixties, seventies, eighties editions.
Tim Wells
Yeah, I've got loads of the black Penguin Classics.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm.
Tim Wells
Particularly exciting for me also is... there's Arth... two Arthur Morrison stories in here. He wrote a lot about East London. His most famous book was A Child Of The Jago, which is about...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Tim Wells
... the slums around Spittlefields. But quite exciting, when I was reading this, there's... one of the stories, the villain is the Hoxton Yob.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Ha!
Tim Wells
And part of the action takes place around Stoke Newington Church Street...
Charles Adrian
Aha!
Tim Wells
... which is just around the corner from where I live so...
Charles Adrian
Right. Nice.
Tim Wells
... it's, kind of, quite nice to find that tucked away in one of these...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tim Wells
... little magazine stories. So, yeah, I've been quite enjoying it.
Charles Adrian
Excellent.
Tim Wells
Yes, it's quite a nice purchase actually.
Charles Adrian
So do you want to read us the first page?
Tim Wells
I will. The first page comes from a story...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I mean, you can choose which the first... yeah, which first page...
Tim Wells
[speaking over] I'll... I'll go with the first one. The first one is called The Ripening Rubies and is by Max Pemberton.
“The plain fact is,” said Lady Faber, “we are entertaining thieves. It positively makes me shudder to look at my own guests and to think that some of them are criminals.”
We stood together in a conservatory of her house in Portman Square, looking down upon a brilliant ballroom, upon a glow of colour and a radiance of unnumbered gems.
I'm pausing because I haven't got my glasses.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tim Wells
She had taken me aside after the fourth waltz to tell me that her famous belt of rubies had been shorn of one of its finest pendants, and she showed me beyond possibility of dispute that the loss was no accident but another of those amazing thefts which had startled London so frequently during the season of 1893. Nor was hers the only case. Though I had been in her house for but an hour, complaints from other sources had reached me: The Countess of Dunholme had lost a crescent brooch of brilliants; Mrs. Cunningham Hardy had missed a spray of pearls and turquoise; Lady Halling had made mention of an emerald locket which was gone as she thought from her necklace - though, as she confessed with a truly feminine doubt, she was not positive that a maid had given it to her. And these misfortunes being capped by the abstraction of Lady Faber’s pendant compelled me to believe that, of all the startling stories of thefts which the season had known, the story of this dance would be the most remarkable.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] How wonderful. I love it. I love that moral shudder that Victorians have about theft and having... having criminals in their midst.
Tim Wells
Yes.
Charles Adrian
As if there's some kind of... It's like... It's like they're... yes, they're wearing a mask of [laughing] respectability but underneath is the very devil.
Tim Wells
Yes.
Charles Adrian
I think that's fantastic.
Tim Wells
All it takes is the maid to show her underwear in a Pulp song and it's...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tim Wells
... it's Murder She Wrote.
Charles Adrian
And it's gone. Ah, how fascinating. Because I... Yeah, it's... I've never read... Apart from Raffles. I've read Raffles.
Tim Wells
Oh, he was...
Charles Adrian
He was the... He was the brother-in-law of...
Tim Wells
Brother-in-law of Conan Doyle.
Charles Adrian
Is that right?
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And I've never read any other, kind of, contemporary detective fiction and I think it's quite interesting to read contemporaries of things that have become popular.
Tim Wells
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly enjoying this one. And it's got a nice... The language to it is quite interesting in a... You totally... It's very easy to read but it's also very different from... from how we speak...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
... and phrase things now...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
... which is quite entertaining.
Charles Adrian
I wonder, do you think they spoke like that in the drawing rooms of late-Victorian London?
Tim Wells
I would hope so.
Charles Adrian
Yeah [laughs] Let's... Let's play the first track that you have suggested to me. I was quite overwhelmed by all of your music, most of which I'd never heard of...
Tim Wells
Oh that's nice.
Charles Adrian
... which was... which was great. I mean, that's part of the... that's part of the reason I do this. You know, I like to collect...
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Uh huh.
Charles Adrian
... books and music from people who know more than I do. And so this first one is by Eek-A-Mouse.
Tim Wells
Eek-A-Mouse, yes. One of my all time favourite performers, Eek-A-Mouse. I particularly picked this track because it does mention Sherlock Holmes in it as well.
Charles Adrian
Brilliant! Well, that is perfect, isn't it?
Tim Wells
So there you go.
Charles Adrian
That's just complete chance.
Tim Wells
Sometimes I get it right.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, absolutely. There... Well, you see, I think there's this, kind of... there's... there's something in the ether that allows us to make the right choices as long as we are open to it. So this is called... this is from... Is it from an album called Mouseketeers?
Tim Wells
The Mousketeer.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] The Mousketeer. That's great. And this is called Atlantis Lover.
Tim Wells
Yup.
Music
[Atlantis Lover by Eek-A-Mouse]
Charles Adrian
So that was... that was Atlantis Lover by Eek-A-Mouse. Thanks very much for introducing me to that. I was... We were just saying, I'm... I've never been a reggae fan. But Tim, you grew up in...
Tim Wells
[speaking over] Loved it, yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... Stoke Newington.
Tim Wells
Well, we grew up with... with reggae all round us. Yeah. Love it.
Charles Adrian
Fantastic. So maybe in the future, I will... I will be more open to Jamaican culture in general.
Tim Wells
[speaking over] There's plenty of good stuff out there.
Charles Adrian
So now, this is the book that I think you should have.
Tim Wells
Okay.
Charles Adrian
I mean, I don't know all that much about you but what I do know is that you are passionate about books...
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... and that you're passionate about words. And a friend of mine, when I was at university, recommended another book by this guy. This is Flann O'Brien.
Tim Wells
Oh, yeah yeah.
Charles Adrian
So he recommended The Third Policeman...
Tim Wells
Yup. I know that.
Charles Adrian
And this is At Swim, Two Birds.
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
Do you know this one?
Tim Wells
I don't know that one, actually.
Charles Adrian
Good. Because I nearly gave you The Third Policeman and then I thought, “Actually, I think this one will suit you better”. It is so...
Tim Wells
I like the cover already. It's got a...
Charles Adrian
It's nice, isn't it?
Tim Wells
Well, we're actually sat in a pub...
Charles Adrian
Yeah...
Tim Wells
... on a wooden table and the cover of the book is a stained wooden table with a glass of whiskey and a pencil.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. That's right. A broken pencil of all things. So, this... Dylan Thomas said of this book: “This is just the book to give your sister if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl.”
Tim Wells
Well, I'm half of that.
Charles Adrian
I thought so. So that seemed totally appropriate to me. And it starts with a Greek quotation, mysteriously.
Tim Wells
Excellent. And no translation.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] No translation. He's a bit like that, Flann O'Brien.
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
He doesn't really care and I like that about him. He just goes, “If you get it, you get it. If you don't, you don't”.
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And the whole book is a bit like that. It's... It's a bit of a mindfuck, I would say.
Tim Wells
Excellent.
Charles Adrian
I think you'll enjoy it. So I'm not going to do an Irish accent for it...
Tim Wells
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... because my Irish accent is not good. But I'm going to read you first... the first page.
CHAPTER I
HAVING placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.
Examples of three separate openings - the first : The Pooka MacPhellimy, a member of the devil class, sat in his hut in the middle of a firwood meditating on the nature of the numerals and segregating in his mind the odd ones from the even. He was seated at his diptych or ancient two-leaved hinged writing-table with inner sides waxed. His rough long-nailed fingers toyed with a snuff-box of perfect rotundity and through a gap in his teeth he whistled a civil cavatina. He was a courtly man and received honour by reason of the generous treatment he gave his wife, one of the Corrigans of Carlow.
The second opening : There was nothing unusual in the appearance of Mr John Furriskey but actually he had one distinction that is rarely encountered - he was born at the age of twenty-five and entered the world with a memory but without a personal experience to account for it. His teeth were well-formed but stained by tobacco, with two molars filled and a cavity threatened in the left canine. His knowledge of physics was moderate and extended to Boyle's Law and the Parallelogram of Forces.
The third opening : Finn McCool was a legendary hero of old Ireland. Though not mentally robust, he was a man of superb physique and development. Each of his thighs was as thick as a horse's belly, narrowing to a calf as thick as the belly of a foal. Three fifties of fosterlings could engage with handball against the wideness of his backside, which was large enough to halt the march of men through a mountain pass.
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
There you go, that's the first page. And those, I think, as far as I remember - it's a while since I read this - but I think that gives you the three main threads - or the four main threads really because you've got the...
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... narra... the narrator situation as well of the book.
Tim Wells
Lovely.
Charles Adrian
So there you go. At Swim, Two Birds by Flann O'Brien...
Tim Wells
Nice one.
Charles Adrian
... for you. So let's... let's play your second track...
Tim Wells
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... which, again, was unknown to me but I... I just... I listened to this and I... immediately I thought, “Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing...
Tim Wells
It's a lively song.
Charles Adrian
... that I like”. This is brilliant. I can imagine jumping up and down to this.
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Perhaps later in the day. Half past eleven...
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... in the morning is a little early, isn't it. But this is called Daddy's Baby and it's by Ted Taylor.
Tim Wells
Yep.
Music
[Daddy's Baby by Ted Taylor]
Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
It is, it's London Fields Radio. My name's Charles Adrian. I'm here with Tim Wells...
Tim Wells
Hello.
Charles Adrian
... in the Betsey Trotwood, which is not exactly your local but is it one that you come to regularly?
Tim Wells
I'm in here quite a lot. I mean, it's the main London pub for poetry.
Charles Adrian
I see.
Tim Wells
So... It has been for quite while. There's lots of gigs here, both music and poetry, and poets do like their drink on occasion.
Charles Adrian
I... Yes, I'd got that impression.
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] So we're here in the poetry room...
Tim Wells
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... which is a very nice room.
Tim Wells
Yes.
Charles Adrian
It's got a nice little corner stage.
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And now I'm just putting off the moment when... when you're going to give me a book that you think I should have.
Tim Wells
I... I've got a lovely book for you, though I say so myself. I was... Actually, I got it the same day when I got the detective book. This is also a book of short stories...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Uh huh.
Tim Wells
... and this is the ghost stories of M. R. James.
Charles Adrian
Oh, great! I know of M. R. James. I think I must have read at least one story by him but I...
Tim Wells
Oh, well, they're great stories.
Charles Adrian
... I don't know much about him.
Tim Wells
No, they're lovely stories. I mean, he actually - talking about performing again - he actually wrote most of his stories to read to his pupils at Christmas.
Charles Adrian
Did he? Uh huh.
Tim Wells
And they'd all gather in his rooms...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tim Wells
... with a roaring fire and a glass of sherry and he'd read them a story every year.
Charles Adrian
Fantastic.
Tim Wells
So they're very much written to be...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Was he... So was he... Where was he st... Where was he teaching?
Tim Wells
He was in Cambridge.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Tim Wells
[indistinct]
Charles Adrian
What did he teach?
Tim Wells
Ooo. I'm not sure. English or religion or something.
Charles Adrian
Oh really. Interesting.
Tim Wells
He was... He was Provost of Eton...
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Tim Wells
A trustee of the British Museum.
Charles Adrian
He was one of those.
Tim Wells
Oh, yeah.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm. Because he's... he's... he's considered one of the greats, isn't he, of ghost writing?
Tim Wells
[speaking over] Oh, they're amazing ghost stories.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Tim Wells
I mean, they're lovely, lovely stories. And what I like about them, there's very few stories where there's actually, sort of, a physical ghost. A lot of them the...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tim Wells
... sort of, the ghost is something following somebody. So it's a sense of something over your shoulder or being followed.
Charles Adrian
Oh that's the...
Tim Wells
It's quite a theme in his work.
Charles Adrian
... that's the creepiest...
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... isn't it? Well, I mean, for me anyway. I've been reading... For a friend of mine, I've been recording a story called The Wendigo, which is in a collection of ghost stories that I have.
Tim Wells
[speaking over] Oh, the Canadian ghosts.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Exactly. And it's not scary [laughing] at all.
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
It's a creature that, kind of, grabs hold of you and whisks you very fast through the air. But it's just ludicrous.
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
There's wonderful sense of the wilderness but there isn't that, kind of, you know, hairs on the back of your neck standing up for me.
Tim Wells
Well, a lot of... with M. R. James stories, it's, kind of, just a slight nudge away from ‘is this normal?’.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm. That's... well, that's... Yeah.
Tim Wells
Which people have naturally every day.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. That's right. That's what's so weird, isn't it?
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Because the further away you get from normal, the more easy it is to dismiss it...
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... and say: “It just doesn't happen”.
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
That's right. No, I love... I love that. Cool. Read me the... Read me the first page of it then.
Tim Wells
Okay. Let's have a look.
Charles Adrian
This is also beautiful Penguin...
Tim Wells
This is quite a nice one, actually. This is an old copy. Actually, what year is it?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] So it's not one of the serieses?
Charles Adrian
No, this is... this is... Let me see what year this is.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I don't know what the plural of ‘series’ is.
Tim Wells
This is... Well, it was first published 1904. This edition's 1959.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Tim Wells
So.
Charles Adrian
Very nice.
Tim Wells
And this is actually Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary. A lot of his stories are about librarians or book collectors.
Charles Adrian
Great.
Tim Wells
So this story... has... The story's called Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book. There's a lot of French names in it, which I'll make a hash of. So if Claire Trévien is listening, sorry about that.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes... dash straight into it, I would say.
Tim Wells
ST BERTRAND DE COMMINGES is a decayed town on the spurs of the Pyrenees, not far [sic] from Toulouse, and still near to Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was a site of a bishopric until the Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world-place - I can hardly dignify it with the name of a [sic] city, for there are not a thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from Toulouse to see St Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, who were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse, under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an hour at the church would satisfy them, and all three could then pursue their journey in direction of Auch. But our Englishman had come early on the day in question, and proposed to himself to fill a note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process of describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn at [sic] the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive or rather hunted and oppressed air which he had. He was perpetually half glancing behind him...
Charles Adrian
Fantastic.
Tim Wells
And so...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I love that “I prefer the latter appellation...
Tim Wells
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] ... as innacurate as that might be”.
Tim Wells
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I think that's great. Now... Now you read that, I remember that there... there was a series of M. R. James stories on Radio 4 Extra and I think Canon... whatever his name is...
Tim Wells
Alberic.
Charles Adrian
... Alberic's Scrapbook was one of them. I don't remember it at all. I'm going to love reading this. That's so fantastic. I used to... I... When I was a teenager, I used to read quite a lot of ghost stories and I... I hate... I both hate and love the feeling of being scared. And I love that fear when you're reading...
Tim Wells
[speaking over] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... a good ghost story and it really... it makes you regret having started it at this hour of the evening.
Tim Wells
[speaking over] Well, it should be, “I want to look away but I can't”.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So... Wonderful. Fantastic. Thank you very much for that. Brilliant. Now, we're going to finish today... Now, I should have said maybe earlier, this... so this will... this will go out very much at the end of May.
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
This is going to go up on... onto the London Fields website - London Fields Radio website, I should say - on the 28th of May. And so I thought for the last... for the last track, I'm going to change the...
Tim Wells
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... the tempo and play something... I've already played, in the past, something by these guys. They're called Urusen. But I'm only playing this because it's from their album One Day In June.
Tim Wells
Okay.
Charles Adrian
It's quite a sweet little track. It's called Vote For Me.
Tim Wells
We'll dedicate it to June Whitfield.
Charles Adrian
That's a very good idea. So for June Whitfield, Vote For Me. Thank you very much Tim Wells.
Tim Wells
Thank you.
Music
[Vote For Me by Urusen]
Charles Adrian
Hello, Charles Adrian here, just sneaking into the end of this week's podcast to tell you about Page One Live, which is happening at the Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney on Thursday, the 30th of May. The doors open at six, it starts at seven. What's happening is that Alan Cunningham is going to come and talk to us about his debut novella Count From Zero To One Hundred, which has just been published by Penned In The Margins and is well worth buying. There will be other Page One stuff too and a chance for you, the audience, to ask him questions. So, London people: come along! It's free and it's going to be good. Details are at charlesadrian.com. I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]