They'll play with time, stealing things they find

[sovay]

Two things before I run off to try for Dorothy Arzner's Get Your Man (1927) with live music at the Somerville Theatre—

The University of Manchester has discovered hitherto unknown papers of Alan Turing. None of them illuminate much about his emotional life between 1949 and 1954, but apparently his opinion of America had plummeted since 1936. At Princeton, he had mostly been puzzled: "The Americans have various peculiarities in conversation which catch the ear somehow. Whenever you thank them for anything, they say 'You're welcome'. I rather liked it at first, thinking I was welcome, but now I find it comes back like a ball thrown against a wall, and become positively apprehensive. Another habit they have is to make the sound described by authors as 'Aha'. They use it when they have no suitable reply to a remark, but think that silence could be rude." I admit that like most people I would have enjoyed a more personal angle, but new material on Turing's research and working methods is not chopped liver.

Brain, I appreciate you dreaming about actors as a break from the panoply of global, national, and personal horror that has been on nightly repeat for months on end now, but I really don't think Bernard Hepton has a band.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Brain, I appreciate you dreaming about actors as a break from the panoply of global, national, and personal horror that has been on nightly repeat for months on end now, but I really don't think Bernard Hepton has a band.

LOL. He could do though, you never know with character actors. I wouldn't put anything past them, particularly not Bernard Hepton. You never know what he'll be up to next - hand-holding archbishops, dodgy Resistance organisers... Anyway, I think dreaming about Bernard Hepton is definitely preferable to nightmares.

(I was especially amused to read that, since I saw him only half an hour or so ago, being dragged off by the Communist Resistance to be executed by Ralph Bates for his treacherous crime of getting a bunch of communists killed in the previous season. Since there are 10 episodes to go, I see this ending badly for Ralph Bates somehow, but you never know with Secret Army.)

[cmcmck]

I'm pleased that one of my almae matres, UKC, has named its new college after Turing, so he joins the likes of Eliot (my own college) Rutherford, Darwin and Keynes. :o)

[moon_custafer]

Whenever you thank them for anything, they say 'You're welcome'.

Now I'm trying to remember what the polite response to thanks was in mid-century Britain. "Not at all," or "It was nothing, really?" This interests me, because a discussion I've seen come up from time to time on Tumblr suggests there's currently a generational divide in N. America between "You're welcome" and "No problem," which occasionally gets acrimonious.

[gwynnega]

I really don't think Bernard Hepton has a band.

...Or does he??