Yesterday, whilst wandering the posher bits of Nottingham in search of a hazelnut lattè, I saw a guy playing a didgeridoo. After watching for a few minutes to check he was doing the circular breathing properly, I tossed him 50p.

There was an awful lot of drool at the foot of the instrument dribbling out onto Bridalsmithgate.

I didn’t think I could top that before I got home, but just before I got on the bus I could have sworn I saw someone smoking using an 8″ cigarette holder. It was quite some distance, but unless he was wandering around chewing on a magic wand, I’m at a loss to explain what the white tipped black stick hanging out of his mouth was.

It would have been more impressive if he’d been wearing a smoking jacket and not a fleece.

A busy evening spent hunched over my computer with both fists wrapped tightly around my microphone.

Two more chapters of Styles and a second podcast.

But then you’re all subscribed to the links and you know that already, eh?

I’ve now recorded my second chapter of Frankenstein for Librivox and embarked on a solo project — Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Affair at Styles. Links and feeds for everything on the podcast page.

If I complete the ‘niles@styles’ project, the following are what immediately spring to mind as favourites from Project Gutenberg’s vast catalogue:

• Classic sciffy like H G Wells or Jules Verne
• G K Chesterton’s Father Brown stories
• Maybe something short in French or German, just to keep my hand in

We’ve had this thang going, starting from random conversations, that certain phrases sound like Bond Girl names.

So, if you hear something in conversation that sounds like it could at a stretch be an entertaining Bond Girl name, you are duty-bound to point it out in the time honoured way outlined below.

The last post here mentioned marine debris, so that’s a good example to start with. You have to assume a bad Sean Sean Connery accent and say… “Ah, Mish Debris! Or may I call you Marine?”

I can’t take the credit for coming up with this, but I did introduce the idea to Umra who’ve had a little occasional fun with it.

(I’m writing this from my mobile, so bare/bear with me if it doesn’t quite work)

Coming from inland, the thing I like best in any seaside resort is the sea itself. Blackpool is no exception despite its many and various insalubrious attractions.

Last night at high tide, the sea was forced against the sea wall and spray was shooting up to 30ft in the air. Eventually, there was enough water on the Promenade that there were waves ebbing over the tram tracks. (interestingly, water and waves are the same under predictive text). This morning, the tide was back out again, but left the tracks covered in marine debris (“Ah, Mish Debris“) like seaweed, and shells.

I’ll be at conference from this afternoon, and may or may not be able get online and/or post for the next few days.

Librivox have a very worthy project of recording copyright free books from Project Gutenberg as MP3s and keeping them ‘somewhere’ on the internet as public domain recordings.

I’ve volunteered to read two chapters of Frankenstein. I really must stop volunteering.

Here’s the first of my chapters, chapter 7. Other people are recording 1-6 etc. It was a bit strange starting in the middle of the story — it’s been years since I read Frankenstein. Not helped by the fact that I half had it in my head that I was actually reading Dracula.

Because it’s in the middle of a story, I’m not going to tag it into my podcast feed. I’ll set up a new feed and list it on the specific Podcasting page (link top right for most people).

Librivox also say that if you want to take on an entire book and read it all, you’re welcome, so I’ll have a think about what I might want to do when I get back from Conference. It has to be a work out of copyrite, and one that’s already in Project Gutenberg.

Celebrity endorsement for this blog.