Manchester, so much to answer for...

Got to see the person who's my assigned radio producer for drama yesterday, as well as the writer Gill Adams and producer Polly Thomas whose work I knew but whose entertaining manner, in both cases, was new and a delight to me, in a very interesting workshop session at the BBC in Manchester.

In the break, I also grabbed time to talk with the people in Comedy about 'No Tomatoes', and firm up some of the schedule.
The vocal recording sessions are going to be very close to delivery date, due to availability of staff and studio resources, so it's a good job I planned to demo episodes to a decent level beforehand, really. Hopefully, this'll mean dropping the final voices into my demo structures can be a fairly straightforwardish process at the end of June!
It's not ideal obviously, but it's fine, and you can't really go railing against the structure of the organisation that wants to make some of your stuff too much can you...? If it was a different kind of place, it probably wouldn't want my work!
Sketch shows don''t normally take a long time in the mix, and there should be no expectation that they might, so I'll try to get the fiddly stuff that means mine will take longer than most done before the recording dates!

After that I nipped over to the University of Manchester's Drama and Music department to see my editor on the academic book on "the children's own programme which adults adore", and gaze on and listen to in wonder, a newly arrived archive of utterly gorgeous stuff there. There's a clue in the 'listen' bit, that there's sound material in it.

It's the personal archive of one of my favourite artists (although I'm not allowed to say who yet, as there's been no public announcement of this acquisition yet) , and I got the chance in my brief visit to hear an earlier transfer of one of the tapes there, featuring the build up of the backing of one of my favourite pieces. Extraordinary, and one of those moments where a tiny insight into the process just increases your respect for the result tenfold.

It's going to be a while before the collection's accessible, transferred and catalogued, but it's going to be very special indeed. Worth trekking across the Sahara in tagelmusts for I'd say...