Fun for Friday Featuring Montreal, Glass Beaches, Inner Critics and Tolkien

ottermore! I can't wait to find out what it is.



Onto Friday's Fun Five:

1. Did you know that we have a piece of the Berlin Wall here in Montreal?

2. A couple of weeks ago I went to the McGill University library exhibit on nursery rhymes, fairy tales and fables.

Andrew Lang!

An historical description of the cat appended to an edition of Cinderella:

3. Susan at All The World's Our Page has written a beautiful metaphor on glass beaches and writers. It made me feel like grabbing pen and paper and letting words wash over me in ceaseless waves. I love language!

4. The other day, Zan Marie had tea with her inner critic, and recorded their conversation. Watch out for the reference to Old Wilmington's Lord John Grey! I'm having a cup right now.

5. I've been a Tolkien fan for so very long that I thought I'd seen it all, whether his writing or art, photos or videos of interviews, what-have-you.

Then, suddenly, thanks to Glynis Smy, who linked to the British Library Archival Sound Recordings, I started exploring the site and found a host of fun stuff, including an interview with a World War I veteran, interviews with pre-World War II farmers (on haymaking, dry stone walls and marking sheep, and a year in a sheep farmer's life, from shearing and dipping to mating and lambing) and two conversations with Tolkien!

They're not actual conversations, though, but scripted pieces for a Linguaphone series on English Conversation. Tolkien is featured in Part 20: At the Tobacconist's, and Part 30: Wireless. Replace the word "wireless" with "iPad" as you listen to the latter, and it sounds remarkably modern.

Here's The Professor himself...