When I invited Frank and you back to mine for a mange tout when I meant ménage à trois
The swallows have returned to Capistrano: last night there were three student parties on our street alone and a fourth around the corner. We are waiting to see if this weekend will bring a new installment of upstairs neighbors.
I opened the refrigerator door and the Brita pitcher fell off its shelf and disintegrated itself in several gallons across the hardwood, so the first thing I did within two minutes of getting up was essentially wash the kitchen floor. I spent the afternoon drying a load of towels and drinking cans of seltzer.
It jarred out of my head too much of the dream I had just woken up from, the slippage of a kitchen sink drama written by a less commonly revived playwright than Shelagh Delaney: a teenage girl and her father who was just about the same age when she was born and still has such a fecklessly fox-boned, adolescent look himself, the two of them as they knock about town, him getting into more fights than holding down jobs, always telling the secret histories of their city which sound half like industrial legend and half like he just made them up, are more often mistaken for a couple than his actual girlfriend with whom he seems to interact most in the form of sincerely less successful apologies. They are clearly each other's half of a double star, a nearly closed system without jealousy, only the exhilaratingly irresponsible habit of dodging the adult world as if it were the two of them against it. It is unsensationally apparent to the audience long before it would cross any other character's mind that in addition to his total improvisation of parenting, he is doing his damnedest not to pass on the next generation of his own implicitly incestuous abuse, which does him credit and gives him little help in figuring out how to support his daughter through a transition he never quite managed himself. Toward the end, it started to flicker between stage sets and the plain world, between rehearsals and history. "I won't meet you," I had to tell the actor, standing in between scenes outside the year of the original production, the same fragile shoulders and thistle-blond hair of his photographs in the role: he would be dead decades before I heard of the play, much less managed to track a copy down. I could tell him that his children had gone into the arts. Onstage she was outgrowing his frozen boyishness and if he could catch up to her, he would still have to let her go.
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asakiyume linked Residente's "This is Not America (feat. Ibeyi)" (2022) and it made me think of Elizma's "Modern Life" (2025), both of which should come with content warnings for current events.
I have discovered that BBC Sounds became region-locked about a month ago, which means that one of my major sources for randomly discoverable audio drama seems to have spiraled down the drain. I am completely indifferent to podcasts. I am a simple person and just wanted to listen again to Lieutenant Commander Thomas Woodrooffe being just as lit up as the fleet.
I opened the refrigerator door and the Brita pitcher fell off its shelf and disintegrated itself in several gallons across the hardwood, so the first thing I did within two minutes of getting up was essentially wash the kitchen floor. I spent the afternoon drying a load of towels and drinking cans of seltzer.
It jarred out of my head too much of the dream I had just woken up from, the slippage of a kitchen sink drama written by a less commonly revived playwright than Shelagh Delaney: a teenage girl and her father who was just about the same age when she was born and still has such a fecklessly fox-boned, adolescent look himself, the two of them as they knock about town, him getting into more fights than holding down jobs, always telling the secret histories of their city which sound half like industrial legend and half like he just made them up, are more often mistaken for a couple than his actual girlfriend with whom he seems to interact most in the form of sincerely less successful apologies. They are clearly each other's half of a double star, a nearly closed system without jealousy, only the exhilaratingly irresponsible habit of dodging the adult world as if it were the two of them against it. It is unsensationally apparent to the audience long before it would cross any other character's mind that in addition to his total improvisation of parenting, he is doing his damnedest not to pass on the next generation of his own implicitly incestuous abuse, which does him credit and gives him little help in figuring out how to support his daughter through a transition he never quite managed himself. Toward the end, it started to flicker between stage sets and the plain world, between rehearsals and history. "I won't meet you," I had to tell the actor, standing in between scenes outside the year of the original production, the same fragile shoulders and thistle-blond hair of his photographs in the role: he would be dead decades before I heard of the play, much less managed to track a copy down. I could tell him that his children had gone into the arts. Onstage she was outgrowing his frozen boyishness and if he could catch up to her, he would still have to let her go.
asakiyume linked Residente's "This is Not America (feat. Ibeyi)" (2022) and it made me think of Elizma's "Modern Life" (2025), both of which should come with content warnings for current events.I have discovered that BBC Sounds became region-locked about a month ago, which means that one of my major sources for randomly discoverable audio drama seems to have spiraled down the drain. I am completely indifferent to podcasts. I am a simple person and just wanted to listen again to Lieutenant Commander Thomas Woodrooffe being just as lit up as the fleet.
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I would deeply appreciate whatever you find to report back. Given the thing where international parcels to the U.S. are pretty much about to go down the drain, I'm not even sure I can ask friends to send me CDs.
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I actually just listened to the second half an hour of a Charles Paris mystery with Bill Nighy streaming on Radio 4, but the on-demand version of it crashes right back to a 404 error on account of my being in the U.S. I am very well aware that none of it is personal, but it has been a bad week in this household for things breaking and my body not working and access to things being lost, so it just wasn't a good discovery!
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I had a VPN when I was in grad school: it was great. I can't see how it wouldn't be worth a try. It's just very fracturing.
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The words on the BBC sounds page were pretty clear that even with a VPN it wouldn't work outside the UK, but I hope you can prove them wrong.
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That seems a ridiculous workaround and I am glad it worked!
The words on the BBC sounds page were pretty clear that even with a VPN it wouldn't work outside the UK, but I hope you can prove them wrong.
Thank you.
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Oh, goddamit. I'm so sorry to hear that.
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Thank you. It made me very happy while I had it.
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Thank you! I was very bummed by the realization that I had not been dreaming a production of a playscript I had read while previously awake.
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I've never seen it staged. I read the play first, then saw the film, which I love and in both versions can't stand the ending of.
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"There's nothing between us and heaven!"
Thank you. I do like the accompaniment of the lights.
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This is true! We could watch that one miraculously unburninated production by the BBC.
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I will watch this movie! Will dream you please find a way to bring it to our much worse waking timeline?
And if he could catch up to her, he would still have to let her go. --there's a poem in that, or a song.
I am completely indifferent to podcasts. Me too.
I like the radio--I like turning the dial: come in, station! I like the sense of, everyone who is listening to this, is listening right now. You phone a friend--are you hearing this? Are you hearing this?
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I would love to. Anything I can do to help.
--there's a poem in that, or a song.
When you say that, I can almost hear the music.
I like the radio--I like turning the dial: come in, station! I like the sense of, everyone who is listening to this, is listening right now. You phone a friend--are you hearing this? Are you hearing this?
Yes! I have done that with songs heard on the radio! It feels like part of the point. I have survived for years on movies streaming on demand, but I still turn on the radio whenever I am in the car.
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Ha, your dreams are going New Wave; I approve. Not of the mini chapter of accidents, tho, obviously.
I have discovered that BBC Sounds became region-locked about a month ago,
Oh, well, that sucks. And also explains a fair bit about why there seems to have been so many takedowns of radio that's been up for ages lately. (YT seems the best bet at the moment; the IA's collection has been almost wiped out.) Although while not much comfort for the loss of access to the archive stuff, the BBC does seem to quite often use podcasts to mean almost any regular show that's not music & not just their actual small selection of things that actually are podcasts, and I'd guess that law will be in operation with the new site, so it should still be worth poking at for current broadcasts. But: :-/ *hugs*
(I doubt I have saved anything you didn't already snag if you wanted it, but I have corralled away a load of mp3s, and you're always welcome to ask. Not of the irl archive stuff, though, and I don't have any means of getting things off Sounds and onto anywhere else. <3)
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Thank you! We did get a new pitcher. The New Wave reminds me to tell you that the day's star of TCM's Summer Under the Stars was Tom Courtenay and while not all of his programming seems to have gone into the on-demand buffer (a recurring problem for some time: we can't tell if it's rights issues or everything just being so much more broken than it used to), Otley (1968) has shown up and we'll see about Private Potter (1962) in the morning. I will undoubtedly rewatch The Dresser (1982) if it sticks.
And also explains a fair bit about why there seems to have been so many takedowns of radio that's been up for ages lately. (YT seems the best bet at the moment; the IA's collection has been almost wiped out.)
That's obnoxious! I had noticed a number of broken links myself, but figured it was the inconvenient attrition of copyrights and time. Please rest assured that I have grabbed the latest Charles Paris which we had not already gotten my mother on CD.
Although while not much comfort for the loss of access to the archive stuff, the BBC does seem to quite often use podcasts to mean almost any regular show that's not music & not just their actual small selection of things that actually are podcasts, and I'd guess that law will be in operation with the new site, so it should still be worth poking at for current broadcasts. But: :-/ *hugs*
*hugs*
I will keep the definition in mind. Predictably, the archival stuff was where I spent the majority of my time! And I kept hoping someone would rip this broadcast to the Internet Archive and the chances now are probably in the negative.
(I doubt I have saved anything you didn't already snag if you wanted it, but I have corralled away a load of mp3s, and you're always welcome to ask. Not of the irl archive stuff, though, and I don't have any means of getting things off Sounds and onto anywhere else. <3)
(I appreciate the offer very much. I realized while stressing to
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Oh, that's cool! Otley is good fun and you will recognise every other person in it if you get around to it. I hope Private Potter does come through. It's such a weird little Play of the Week masquerading as a film. ETA: [<-- affectionate] (It does need warnings for excessive and unnecessary use of fake facial hair though.)
And I kept hoping someone would rip this broadcast to the Internet Archive and the chances now are probably in the negative.
There are some things still up there, so you never know. And lots of people upload it to YT instead, so it's always worth searching there too. (When all the IA stuff vanished, I found this site, which is very good at making YouTube videos into downloaded audio mp3 files - that's how I'm listening to No Name currently!) I haven't seen that one around, though, I'm afraid.
that part of the problem is that I live now in a country which is actively trying to kill its libraries and losing any kind of archive feels like the world closing that much further.
Yes, it really is horrible. *hugs*
Btw, talking of the IA, I don't know if you are still possibly interested in A Fatal Inversion or not (the Barbara Vine Mysteries serial with Douglas Hodge and Jeremy Northam), but I wrote a
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Both your title and your dream are story ideas.
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That would be the classiest pitcher.
*hugs*
Both your title and your dream are story ideas.
Thank you! The title is a lyric from the song I was listening to.
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I really minded waking up.
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Here I gave a little open-mouthed gasp of beauty
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I don't know what else to say except thank you, truly.