If this is Wednesday, it must be Nostrum

It just seems wrong to talk about it here when it’s live at Nostrum Nation.  

After all, I don’t have much to do with it. Jules and the Nostrumite do all the writing. All I do is record it, because I have the capacity to do so, having bought that nice microphone back in the day. Since the apparently eternal hiatus of The View from Tab, the mic has just been sitting there on my desk at the chez, wondering how it’s name changed from mike without any formal memo on the subject. And now I can put it to use again. Oh frabjous day, etc., etc. (And are you telling me that Word doesn’t know how to spell frabjous? Who’s feeding this spell checker? Jeesh!) Of course, it’s a tossup whether to read the episodes or listen to them. There’s some stuff that I think will just fly by for mere listeners, but then again, as a committed audiobook fan myself, I love to listen to books, something I do nearly every day. The experience is different from holding the words in one’s hand, but it’s in the same ballpark. And weren’t we all raised on having books read to us, before we took the process in hand and did it ourselves? Or for that matter, I don’t recall Homer sending out The Iliad with a self-addressed stamped envelope to all the publishers in Athens and holding his breath, waiting for a reply other than that the book doesn’t fit their needs at this time. (Not that I was actually in publishing at the time. Which reminds me: My very first job in publishing was an assignment reading the slush pile, which publishers still did back then. My brain has yet to recover from that special numbness that comes from handling one unreadable manuscript after another. It’s not so much that they’re bad, but that they’re bad and so much work went into them. So much love and care and, back then, neat typing. Nowadays people skip trying to get published and go straight to Kindle on their own. Like I did. So much love and care… I think I’m going to start crying.)

So, in a word, Nostrum is back. How long it will last, no one knows. We can only assume that it will be no better or worse than the first two series, and that it will go on for a while and then stop some day without any warning, and we’ll spend a few years picking its bones, and then Series 4 will come along.

I hope I’m still alive to see it.

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