Laughing at names

Was out bright and early this morning for a Farnham edition of the Talking Newspaper. Oddly, I almost had the same readers this week. There are over 50 readers so this doesn’t happen often. Actually, I normally go months before I see the same reader twice. The only exception this week was another new reader (this was her fourth time and her second was with me as well) just like last week.

We started getting a bit concerned when the 90 year old Alistair failed to appear on time, something he never does. I rang him but there was no-one home. This has only happened to me once before but it’s pretty easy to cover one reader. We all get a third more stories and the listeners have less vocal variety.

Our engineer was the deaf chap I’ve mentioned before – the one who turned up last week then went home again when he realized it was the wrong week.

At one point, during the editing, Lindsey (one of the readers) suddenly asked if anyone knew how to pronounce some German song titles she had in a short piece. She then asked how to pronounce one of the funniest names I think I’ve heard since Mr Bizi Baconandeggs back when I worked at Social Security. It was Dorthe Kwelch and it had us in hysterics. Saying it aloud a few times and you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, once in the studio, Lindsey was reading through the piece when she reached the name. I saw her face start to twitch, her mouth straining to correctly mouth the words. Jackie and I looked away, not wanting to put her off. She said “For more information, contact Dorthe Kwelch on…” and we all burst into silent laughter. The deaf engineer had no idea what was happening.

This shines a light on one of the problems in having a deaf sound engineer. At one stage, Jackie had to say “...in Farnham centre.” But she paused after Farnham before realizing the last word was on the next line and the sentence wasn’t finished. It was a very funny pause. This had us giggling as well.

When we reached the end of the recording, the engineer wanted to re- record her saying “...in Farnham centre.” without the pause. All of us told him, separately, that it wasn’t necessary because he could just delete the word ‘centre’ – the story still made perfect sense. But he didn’t hear any of us and insisted she read the phrase. Which, eventually, she did. Not really important but a bit annoying.

Apart from that slight hiccough and one caused right at the beginning by a typo in the studio sheet which wasn’t really anyone’s fault, it all went very well. I should add that Jackie and Lindsey are around my age and in full command of all their faculties. Makes a pleasant change.

Before I left, the next presenter had a little hush-hush chat with me about the current frictions in the committee, saying he wanted to drop his concerns into my ear because I was the voice of reason. (I’m sure my wife would never agree with that!) I took his concerns on board and said I’d see what I could do.

And with that, I was off home to walk the poodles and tidy the house.