Hear my words
Herself said she wanted to read my embryonic book.
I said it wasn’t ready.
She said I must have written something and she’d like to read that.
Now nothing in this house is ever straightforward. She said she wanted to read it but she didn’t want to read it. Apparently she wanted me to read it out loud to her.
I have enough problems reading my own shit as I tend to be hyper critical. However my criticisms pale into insignificance compared to Herself. I didn’t relish reading my stuff out loud knowing that I would be interrupted every few seconds by “that’s shite” or “that’s rubbish”. I had to do a drop of lateral thinking.
I did a scratch around the Interwebs and found a programme that promised to read my magnum opus out loud. I found one, installed it and ran it. To my amazement it worked. The bloke “reading” the book has a very flat American voice but he seems to get the hang of it. I translated the whole thing into an audio file and dumped it on the little box connected to the television in Herself’s room.
I fired it up and left her to it.
It’s quite strange sitting here, hearing this weird voice reading out my shit in another room.
I had stressed in no uncertain terms that the stuff I had written was a rough draft and needed massive editing. She got as far as chapter three before announcing that it sounds like a rough draft and badly needs a lot of editing.
*sigh*
One of my cars has a feature which enables a creamy female voice to read aloud any incoming SMS text messages – sometimes this can, of course, become problematical if you're not alone in the car. However, it is fun to get someone to send you a really filthy text, featuring the most fruity and downright rude words they know, then listening to the creamy female uttering those gutter-snipe words can be quite amusing on a long journey. Simple things please simple minds, as they say.
Give your 'flat American' a paragraph of putrid piffle and see how he manages that.
Heh! Good idea. Like this?
As Mr Punch once memorably said, "That's the way to do it".
Try a really filthy one next time.
You supply the text, I'll supply the voice!
I think Herself acknowledging it as a draft is probably a mark of approval!
In fairness, one or two [out of dozens] suggestions were fine. I have already done a rewrite of the offending passage.
I like what you did, but you were asking for it. The longest journey starts with the first step and all that Kung Fu Tze business.
Actually, that first step is a long way back. I passed another milestone today…..
Your title had the words and music of Josef Locke enter my brain.
Sorry about that……
Dammit! Now I'll be dreaming of gondolas tonight!