Sunday 24 January 2016

Calling Professor Branestawm

As a non-inventor but a regular attender of parties full of Eurocrats who talk to me at great length about things I am not interested in and do not understand, I should be very grateful if somebody would invent a tiny contraption that I could place inside my ear before outings. This contraption, although minute, would contain a number of audio programmes - recordings of EL Wisty and Shelley Berman, the ramblings of Adam Buxton, old episodes of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, cheerful things of that kind. These programmes could be activated whenever a Eurocrat went on talking for more than a minute and a half - oh all right for more than two seconds; why pretend I have any patience. No one but me would be aware of what was happening. I would still nod and smile and even ask the occasional question - not that Eurocrats ever need the encouragement of a question. Simultaneously, I would be listening to more entertaining - but hidden - voices, murmuring soothingly into my ear.

As well as this wonderful device, I'd be grateful if someone else - or the same person, I'm not picky - could come up with an App that would work in a sort of periscopic manner so that, in galleries where you aren't allowed to take photographs, you could hold your telephone in the position you hold it when reading emails et cetera, but somehow the telephone's camera would, from that angle, be able to take a picture of whatever was on the wall.

Thank you in advance, dear inventors, for your wonderful ingenuity.

Warmest wishes from ZMKC

2 comments:

  1. It sounds awful. Whenever I find myself stuck with humourless people, I feel that I've been given a licence to have some fun, but obviously that option isn't available to you. I'd set my phone's timer to go off at different intervals, so that you could at least pretend that you had an urgent matter to attend to.

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    1. You would have such a tremendous amount of licensed fun here. There used to be a British ambassador who carried two glasses at all times at parties. If he struck interesting interlocutors, he just drank both drinks. If he got stuck with duller types he would gesture vaguely at the heaving throng & say his wife was getting impatient for her drink, & move on. His wife wasn't usually there at all, but that didn't matter.

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