Church visiting

[gradus]

Framlingham ... don't forget to visit the shrine to the blessed Ed Sheeran.

[Pulcinella]

Framlingham ... don't forget to visit the shrine to the blessed Ed Sheeran.

Talking of shrines, we were amused on visiting Walsingham that there was a request for only one petition to the BVM (not sure now if in the RC or Anglican shrine): presumably there's a backlog the poor dear has got to get through, rather like dealing with any other Customer Services helpline these days.

[cloughie]

When I'm visiting churches I like to check out the acoustics - a quick look around to make sure there's no one around and then a religious choice, in case we subsequently find ourselves not alone.

[Pulcinella]

When I'm visiting churches I like to check out the acoustics - a quick look around to make sure there's no one around and then a religious choice, in case we subsequently find ourselves not alone.

I usually just clap, but yes: an interesting thing to do.

[kernelbogey]

I usually just clap, but yes: an interesting thing to do.

Cf Gerard Hoffnung's advice to visitors to London: Have you tried the famous echo in the Briish Museum Reading Room?

[kernelbogey]

Here's a new book on this topic, looking good and readable: Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by church by Peter Ross

[gurnemanz]

When I'm visiting churches I like to check out the acoustics - a quick look around to make sure there's no one around and then a religious choice, in case we subsequently find ourselves not alone.

Reminded me of Larkin:

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

[pastoralguy]

Sorry, this is probably off topic but I had an experience with an open reel tape recorder I bought for a pound in a house sale in one of the most expensive parts of Edinburgh. I could barely carry it, it was so heavy! It lasted about three weeks before it ground to a halt but in those three weeks I managed to record most of my family members speaking.

The tape went back into its plastic box and was pretty much forgotten about for well over thirty years when I acquired a lovely SONY machine. I found the plastic tape box and it was incredible to hear those voices from so long ago from long dead relatives.

I’d recorded my great Uncle Ernie talking about his upbringing in Devon with his very strong accent he’d never lost. I played it to his wife, my great aunt who by this time was suffering from advanced dementia. Very sadly, she didn’t recognise his voice and had to be told it was her late husband who had died twenty years earlier.

[kernelbogey]

Sorry, this is probably off topic....

No matter... lovely story.

[Globaltruth]

Fortunately yes, back in 1961 I think it would have been. Back then the folks had just bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which seemed such an exciting acquisition at that time, being able to hear ones own voice for the first time. We took it up to Brooke House for a family gathering, and I switched the machine on and asked family members to just spout on anything that came into their heads. Grandad talked about a leather tankard he had obtained at an auction and read out the legend embossed on it. It now seems strange contrasting his gruff, slightly cockney manner of speaking with various of his siblings, all of whom would have been born between 1875 and 1890, most of them having acquired that drawly affected Bertie Woosterish manner of speaking from the 1920s and 30s that came from upward social mobility at that time. I also recorded Mum and Dad in conversation at home - Mum still betraying her Teeside upbringing in her vowels, which one never noticed at the time: she lost that accdent and became completely RP in later years, sadly - and the two of them playing our piano - Mum a virtuoso Chopin performer - and singing "Phyllis Hath Such Charming Graces" - Mum in Dad's tenor range! That 6" Scotch tape was pretty ropy by the time I found it among stuff intended for keeping or not when in 2004 I sold up and moved here, so I salvaged what was still listenable by transferring it onto a blank cassette, which I dig out from time to time, along with their photo albums, to remind myself what an odd family I emerged from!

That all sounds terrific S_A. Great.
It is possible to get sound transferred from cassette to a digital format...I strongly suggest you do that so the artefact persists in some form.

A bit like photos - now there are too many, back then, not enough...