Programming note: Join me tomorrow, Saturday, for a springy edition of my Serenade Radio show, On the Town. The fun starts at 5pm Greenwich Mean Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe/1pm North American Eastern, and 4am in Sydney (sorry about that: you might find the repeat more convivial - that's 4pm in New South Wales). You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
With that out of the way and just ahead of Episode Eight of our current Tale for Our Time, a word to the wise:
As I predicted four years ago, before America's laughably misnamed "election" of 2020, things have cratered very fast on the free-speech front - in Canada, Australia, Europe and, most appallingly of all, in the United Kingdom, where, under an evil and ever more brazenly authoritarian government, you'll get more prison time for a Facebook post than for raping a child. In such a world, we thank all of you who swing by the Steyn shingle as part of your daily rounds. As I have said often, I so miss the Internet of yore and the heyday of independent websites in the early years of this century - before the woketalitarians seized control.
So I'm particularly touched in such an environment by your kind comments about our content here, including this latest audio adventure, written in 1922 and played just for laughs after last month's excursions into Armageddon. April, a First Half-Hour Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club from Illinois, writes:
I'm terribly unsophisticated but I'm so pleased I embarked on this voyage! I occasionally have to pause my brushwork because I laugh out loud. I'll be in steerage if you're looking for me.
Thank you, April. We'd upgrade you to a suite but the Albanian guys are all in there...
In tonight's episode of The Girl on the Boat, a ship's concert for the benefit of the Seamen's Widows and Orphans is trying enough in the best of circumstances, but even more so when your fiancée fails to recognise who you're meant to be imitating:
"I can't forgive a man for looking ridiculous. Oh, what, what," she cried, "induced you to try to give an imitation of Bert Williams?"
Sam started, stung to the quick.
"It wasn't Bert Williams. It was Frank Tinney!"
"Well, how was I to know?"
"I did my best," said Sam sullenly.
"That is the awful thought."
Sam may be no good at doing Bert Williams, but by the end of the evening he is certainly a "Nobody".
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Episode Eight by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier installments of The Girl on the Boat can be found here - and, if your tastes incline to something more brutal, my serialisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four starts here.
The other song referenced in tonight's show is "The Rosary", written at the end of the nineteenth century by Ethelbert Nevin and Robert Cameron Rogers. We have played Mr Nevin's later hit "Mighty Lak' a Rose" in connection with Petula and Sinatra, but I can't recall ever featuring "The Rosary". When P G Wodehouse was writing in the Twenties, the jazz babies may have preferred "The Charleston", but he's quite correct that, when aunts and uncles got up to sing at amateur nights, this was a staple:
Thank you again for all your comments, thumbs up or down, on this latest tale. Very much appreciated. If you'd like to know more about The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.
I will see you back here tomorrow for Part Nine of The Girl on the Boat.
