H&M

I went into Waterstones to buy a particular book today. I'm being specific in that I often go into bookshops on a whim and come out with random books. Anyway. This book has somehow been converted into a radio drama (I wonder if there is a machine somewhere that takes the pages and reads them out as wireless words?) and it is being broadcast each day this week on Radio 4. That nice Toby Jones is in it, or his voice is - I don't doubt he's on an atoll somewhere smoking cigars and sipping chilled Chardonnay as befits an actor of his stature. It's so good that I couldn't leave the house while it was on. So to Waterstones to purchase a copy (without that nice Toby Jones' voice but that's what you get, or don't, with books) where I enquired where I might find a copy. I was pretty sure that it would be in the fiction section but it might have been in crime fiction and they might have a special area for books which have been converted for other uses such as wireless. She interrogated her system and frowned. Frowning is one step down from the tooth-sucking that mechanics learn during day one at mechanic school so I knew it wouldn't bode well. It seems that this book, which is currently being broadcast on the finest wireless station in the world, doesn't exist. It has never been committed to print. It is only available on Kindle.

It seems that this book has only ever been between the author's word processor and the BBC machine that converts bits into that nice Toby Jones' voice and the voices of other actors are added too. Where would we be if Shakespeare hadn't bothered writing stuff down but had given Lord Reith a bell and said "Let's get this out on the air without any of that writing stuff down stuff"?