I learned a valuable lesson today. When it comes to editing the Talking Newspaper, it’s a good idea to read BOTH sets of stories. In that way, you don’t tend to make the kind of mistake I made today. Then your mistake and subsequent explanation made to the engineer, won’t be left in the recording. It was fortunate I didn’t swear.
It went a little something like this:
ME: ...Robini polled 287 votes more than Mr Hall to take the town’s county seat at the fourth time of asking – having finished second in 2005, 2009 and 2017. Meanwhile, fellow Lib Dem Paul Follows, won Godalming South, Milford and Witley by a huge margin of 1,158 votes [pause] And I’m not going to read that because Susan just said the same thing. I’ll start back from just after the three years. [pause] But there were no sour grapes from Mr Hall…
Obviously I should have restarted from long before the years, but I guess I’m a bit used to depending on the engineer to understand what I’m saying. I shouldn’t. It’s hardly fair. Particularly while recording remotely.
Apart from hearing my own mistake while listening to the recording over dinner, it all seemed to go fine. Susan was my reader this month and Mike R the engineer.
Actually, Mike recorded it ‘multi-track’ so we could hear each other while not being recorded. It means all three mikes are left on. Then, during the edit, Mike deletes the tracks not needed. It’s a great way to avoid losing any chat because the microphones have been turned off.
It’s also a great way to gauge the humour in my Letter from Sweden because I hear them laugh. Having a live audience gives me a chance to pause slightly where needed rather than second guess the listening audience.
As soon as we’d finished recording, I had to high tail it up to the shops. And it rained. Not heavily and I still wore shorts but it was annoying. Especially given that, as soon as I returned home, it stopped raining and the blue sky returned.
Mind you, the rain returned late in the day, just as Mirinda went for one of her walk ‘n’ talks. Which meant damp puppies.
I stayed at home and made dinner. A delicious frittata which I was particularly pleased with. My frittata skills are getting very good.
Before going to bed, and clearly not satisfied with recording all morning, I recorded the latest episode of my podcast Letter from Sweden. Given I wrote the letter back in March, it felt odd reading about the weather when it is so different now.
[2024 UPDATE: At the time this was written, I had a podcasting account. All of my ‘Letters’ are now on this blog, on the Podcasts page.]
