Programming note: Tomorrow, Friday, we shall have a brand new edition of The Mark Steyn Show for you, with three of my favourite guests.
~Thank you for your continuing comments upon The Mark Steyn Club's eighth birthday. Gareth Roberts, a Steyn Clubber from the English West Country, is still seeking scapegoats for his tardiness:
It wasn't until the second day that I joined. I blame the time zones!
That might work if you were on Lord Howe Island, Gareth. But not in England.
Meanwhile, welcome to Part Seven of our birthday audio entertainment in Tales for Our Time. For this springtime, we're enjoying Three Men on the Bummel by the master of comic digression, Jerome K Jerome. Fraser Sutherland, an East Anglian Steyn Clubber, writes:
I had to stop listening at the conclusion of the exchange between the 'Scotchman' and the 'lassie'; I needed to recover my mental composure after laughing so hard (1) at MS's startling Scots accent in both male and female guise and (2) the sheer devilish comic psychological insight of Jerome K. Jerome. I imagined 'civilisational collapse', as advertised, would be a dour, lugubrious affair but, after Mrs. Hignett, Eustace and others in the recent Tale and this new, equally damn funny offering, I reckon it's going to be a barrel of laughs. As for an overall assessment of 'Scotchmen' I'm not so sure the character's disingenuous self-assessment is that far off anyway: 'We're a' weak, sinfu' creatures Jennie, An' ye'd hae some deefficulty to find a man weaker or or mair sinfu' than mysel". Priceless. The whole sequence will live long in the memory. Now I must try to continue.
Thank you, Fraser. Multiple Scots accents can be something of a strain on the voice, but I like to pull them out from time to time, as I did in The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Prisoner of Windsor.
As to all our other tales, you'll find eight years' worth archived here, in handy easy-to-access Netflix-style tile format. Oh, and we do poetry, too. And, if you've missed the beginning of Three Men on the Bummel, you can start fresh with Part One and have a good old binge-listen.
Tonight's episode offers some final digressions before our trio departs for Germany. And our narrator is still not done explaining what his book is not about:
Lastly, in this book there will be no scenery. This is not laziness on my part; it is self-control. Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.
Actually, I would say scenery is quite hard to write - although Mr Jerome's point is well-taken that chaps who are good at it are generally too good at it. Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Seven of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in.
If you'd like to know more about The Mark Steyn Club, well, we'd love to have you along for our ninth season. So please click here for more info - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.
Do join me back here tomorrow for Part Eight of Three Men on the Bummel.