Welcome to the latest in our series of audio adventures, Tales for Our Time, and Part Three of my serialization of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. We're always happy to hear from Mark Steyn Club members who enjoy our thrilling radio serials. In this case, David, a California listener, let his membership lapse, and then realized he missed our nightly yarns and it was time to come home:
Hey Mark-
Just re-upped the club! was missing those Tales for Our Time.
Also going on the Alaska cruise in September and greatly looking forward to the dynamic repartee of the Steyn/Miller continuum!
We'll be doing a live Tale for Our Time on the Alaska cruise, David - and on the Med next year. As for our newest frolic, Wanda Sherratt, a First Week Founding Member, is looking forward to this one:
Hurrah! I've been hoping you'd do Three Men in a Boat since last year! The perfect summertime tale, this is one of the rare books that actually made me laugh out loud while reading. Usually I wait until the reading is over then download them all at once, but I think I'm going to make an exception and listen to this one as it progresses.
That's a good plan, Wanda. In tonight's episode, the preparations for our three chaps' epic voyage have moved on to the menu:
For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam—but no cheese. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the whole boat to itself. It goes through the hamper, and gives a cheesy flavour to everything else there. You can't tell whether you are eating apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There is too much odour about cheese.
I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at Liverpool. Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards. I was in Liverpool at the time, and my friend said that if I didn't mind he would get me to take them back with me to London, as he should not be coming up for a day or two himself...
Ripe and mellow as the cheese is, so too is Jerome K Jerome's tale. Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Three of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Parts One and Two can be found here.
Among the comments on our first episode, this one gave me pause - from Deborah Stoldt, a First Day Founding Member from New Jersey:
I love Slade, one of my favorite bands.
For a moment I couldn't quite see the relevance of that - and then I remembered an aside of mine from the introduction:
Jerome shares the distinction of being one of Caldmore's two greatest sons, along with Noddy Holder of the band Slade, who wrote and sang 'Cum on Feel the Noize/Girls grab the boys...' And no, for you American rockers, that's not a misreading of the lyric.
I'm not sure how great an overlap there is between Jerome K Jerome and Noddy Holder fans (other than Deborah and Tim Rice), but I do think the decision of the Yank cover guys Quiet Riot to amend the text to "Cum on Feel the Noize/Girls rock your boys" is totally feeble and pathetic, and possibly the moment when the rot irretrievably set in.
If you've only joined the Steyn Club in recent days and missed our earlier serials (Conan Doyle's The Tragedy of the Korosko, Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, plus Kipling, Kafka, Dickens, Gogol, Louisa May Alcott, Jack London, John Buchan, Scott Fitzgerald and more), you can find them all on our new easy-to-access Netflix-style Tales for Our Time home page.
If you have friends who might appreciate Tales for Our Time, we have a special Steyn Club Gift Membership that lets them in on that and all the other fun in The Mark Steyn Club. The Club is now in its third year, and helps support all our content - whether in print, audio or video - and keep it out there in the world for everyone. In return, membership confers, aside from Tales for Our Time, a few other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly;
~Transcript and audio versions of Mark's Mailbox, SteynPosts, and our other video content;
~My video series of classic poetry;
~Priority booking for the upcoming third Mark Steyn Club Cruise (because our second is entirely sold out);
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, such as my recent tour with Dennis Miller;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the opportunity to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and, for a friend or family member, don't forget that Gift Membership. And please join me tomorrow for Part Four of Three Men in a Boat.