Mort

I was considering using "Death" as the title for this post but after a bit of thought decided that it might have been a bit over-dramatic, especially seeing as no one actually died. The reason I am talking about this is because I have been meaning to catch up with the latest repeat of Terry Pratchett's Mort which has been airing on BBC Radio 7 this week and I finally got round to listening to it this evening. It seems they are running some sort of Terry Pratchett season at the moment and are airing some other books as well. This one is different however, because it has been adapted for radio and is a dramatisation of the book rather than simply someone reading the lines. I guess it is somewhere in between a book and a film or a film without the pictures - which is often quite nice because the extra sound effects and characters give you a little bit more of a hint as to what is happening without needing a narrator to describe all of the sounds that are going on.

It often amazes me how the sound effects are generated as well because most of them are so far away from the actual noises that you wonder how anyone other than someone clinically insane thought to use them. Bouncing balls and chopping vegetables might relate to gun shots and the guillotine for example and it just goes to show how much imagination the sound engineers have. This blog from a while back now shows how they are working towards making the radio shows more immersive through the use of 3D surround sound although the downside to that is that it only works with headphones at the moment, primarily because it gives a much better listening experience without the need for 8.1 surround sound and most of the digital radios at the moment have only one speaker, let alone five or eight.

Something amazing also happened to day in that I got some exercise! Having been snowed in for the past week or so, we had started to run out of food. I'm amazed we lasted this long to be honest but seeing as we went pretty overboard with the Christmas shopping, we had a freezer full of supplies that have been gradually dwindling. I wasn't going to attempt to use the car whilst our road was still covered in a blanket of ice and snow so I got wrapped up and set off on foot. It wasn't so bad on the way there and I actually quite enjoyed the walk on roads I haven't been down for a very long time. The Co-op is just short of a mile away from us so it's a bit of a trek to get there but thankfully it was fairly well stocked so the trip wasn't wasted. The trip back was more of a problem though because I was now carrying three bags with bottles and tins that were very heavy and I resorted to carrying them Santa style after about half way because I felt my arms would fall off otherwise. Who need the gym 'ey?