Programming note: If you missed the most recent edition of The Mark Steyn Show, with Michele Bachmann, Eva Vlaardingerbroek and John O'Sullivan, you can watch it in full here.
Thank you for all your kind reaction to this latest Tale for Our Time. I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Steyn Club member and commenter "Leo VT" on last month's Mark Steyn Cruise, and told him I'd always assumed he was Leo from Vermont. But in fact the VT is an abbreviation of his (Dutch) surname. Leo writes:
Our house is excited on this return of TFOT... Looking forward to many pleasant listening hours. Your voice seemed at peak performance and we are looking forward to the twists in the plot.
And here we are, many twists later. In tonight's penultimate episode of Out of Time, exhausted by living Weena's rendezvous with destiny over and over and over, our Victorian time-traveller is nevertheless surprised by her confession:
She sat on the bed and motioned me to do likewise, and then leaned her head on my shoulder.
"I like you, nineteenth-century man, I do. I know we all tease you for being a total racist, but me mam thinks you're about the best thing that ever happened to me. Thinks we should go and settle down in some nice part of the country like ...Telford, is it? Heard that was pretty nice. But the thing is, I'm beginning to think you're not the racist, and maybe I am."
"What?"
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Sixteen of Out of Time simply by clicking here and logging-in.
If you're new to our Club, or if the day's developments simply make you despair, there's nothing healthier than taking a short break from the hell of the hamster-wheel news-cycle and exploring the delights of our Tales for Our Time home page. It's configured in Netflix tile style, with the stories organised by category - thrillers, fantasy, romance, etc - which we hope will make it easy for you to find a favourite diversion of an evening. You can access no fewer than sixty cracking yarns here - and all previous episodes of our current adventure here.
If you've yet to hear any of our Tales for Our Time, you can do so by joining The Mark Steyn Club and enjoy our nightly audio adventures every evening twenty minutes before lowering your lamp - or hoard the episodes and binge-listen at the weekend or on a long car journey, if your government still permits you to take one. For more details on that and other benefits to Steyn Club membership, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Please join me right here tomorrow evening for the conclusion of Out of Time.