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I heard that there once was a music teacher with a piano outside his teaching rooms. (Maybe he also had another one inside them as well.) If, as a student, you wanted to annoy him, you simply played the final moments of a tune / sonata … stopping short of the conclusion. As a simpler version, you could just leave unresolved a sequence of chords. In the official parlance, I think this is called leaving the Diminished Seventh hanging there like a saucisson in a French boucherie.
This is the sort of the feeling we left in the other listener on Sunday with the quiz. We made a big fandango as usual, and then I failed to supply the answer at the end. It's a small thing, but (See above) annoying.
Here and now, I say sorry. The answer was the Female Chelsea Pensioners. By the way, Patricia Gaffney in Liverpool wrote to us wondering if only married people win the thing. "I refer to several of the recent recipients of your much coveted BH Honey spoon in inquiring: Must I get married in order to be a winner?"
Anyway, if you are still with me here's a look at life on the programme this coming Sunday, sent with the best wishes of our lot here.
+ Soft touch regulation is over. Listening to those plans for new banking rules has got us thinking about soft touch / heavy handed. If you have a minute in these times when there is so much else worth doing, please send your nomination for the most heavy-handed BH moment you can remember. If you are feeling benevolent, by all means put in a word for a soft touch moment.
+ Innocent and Inside. You often hear it said that nearly everyone in jail protests their innocence to the authorities. I've no idea yet what the total number of Guilty vs. Not Guilty pleas is .. But if you are at work in the Criminal Justice System, you can put me right on this before the programme. But we are thinking of uniting some experienced voices on this whole theme to join us on Sunday.
+ Hugh Sykes in Iraq. We've hopes of an update from Hugh on life in Iraq. Reading the Sundays over the last few months, and listening to our reviewers, it does seem that the focus has shifted to Afghanistan.
+ Speaking ill of the dead. You might have read / heard about the row over the film about Brian Clough. The mercurial football manager, plain spoken and charismatic and is an obvious subject for a film. But given the arguments, we wondered what are the rights and wrongs of faction when relatives are alive?
Rupert the Editor has read that Alistair Campbell has asked people what one line would they like to see in a Labour Party Manifesto. He wonders if there is an item in what one line would you like to see in any manifesto?
This is now the length of the Manifesto of the Citizens Against Gasometer Party, so for now,
Best wishes, Paddy and BH team, Rupert (editing) Charlie and Liz (producing.)
"Spring." By Andrew Motion
Broadcasting House,
8th March 2009.
Daffodils that have been content to sleep all winter in the roots of my apple tree remember now they have a date to keep.
Snowdrops shake and brighten as they stir; green bud-heads hesitate, then wriggle free; the silent blackbird becomes a reveller;
and next thing I know the crocuses are here, pale gas jets burning almost invisibly, but enough to heat the whole world of the air.
