slanderhour

slanderhour

By slanderhourSociety & Culture
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slanderhour episodes

  • Semi - Builders

    An old man going a lone highway,

    Came, at the evening cold and gray,

    To a chasm vast and deep and wide.

    Through which was flowing a sullen tide

    The old man crossed in the twilight dim,

    The sullen stream had no fear for him;

    But he turned when safe on the other side

    And built a bridge to span the tide.

    “Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,

    “You are wasting your strength with building here;

    Your journey will end with the ending day,

    You never again will pass this way;

    You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,

    Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

    The builder lifted his old gray head;

    “Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,

    “There followed after me to-day

    A youth whose feet must pass this way.

    This chasm that has been as naught to me

    To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;

    He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

    Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”

    38 min
  • Semi - Don't

    Don't

    Don't do,

    Don't, do

    Don't do that.

    Don't pull faces,

    Don't tease the cat.

    Don't pick your ears,

    Don't be rude at school.

    Who do they think I am?

    Some kind of fool?

    One day they'll say

    Don't put toffee in my coffee

    don't pour gravy on the baby

    don't put beer in his ear

    don't stick your toes up his nose.

    Don't put confetti on your spaghetti

    and don't squash peas on your knees.

    Don't put ants in your pants

    don't put mustard in the custard

    don't chuck jelly at the telly

    and don't throw at a computer

    dont throw fruit at a computer.

    Don't what?

    Don't throw fruit at a computer

    Don't what?

    Don't throw fruit at a computer

    Who do they think I am?

    Some kind of fool?

    17 min
  • Semi - Spiderman

    in my mind you are my friend


    swinging from the buildings that pierce the sky
    masked in privacy but shining of honesty
    you know who I am without my mask

    every night you take off your suit to mend
    every night I check my suit of pretend

    diving headfirst to be a part of your story
    looking from a distance with so much connection
    I follow you through your journey

    safe from the mortalities that extend  
    you save me from my villain's end

    but our paths have never crossed
    my thanks is the silence ringing in your ear
    a ghost of the touch you will never feel

    in my mind you are my friend

    26 min
  • Semi - Empathy

    We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.

    1 hr 20 min
  • Thomas Pynchon

    Love never goes away,

    Never completely dies,
    Always some souvenir
    Takes us by sad surprise.

    You went away from me,

    One rose was left behind —
    pressed in my Book of Hours,
    That is the rose I find …

    Though it’s another year,

    though it’s another me,
    under the rose is a drying tear,
    Under my linden tree ….

    Love never goes away,

    Not if it’s really true,
    It can return, by night, by day,
    Tender and green and new
    As the leaves from a linden tree, love,
    That I left with you.

    14 min
  • Semi - Wall

    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

    That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
    And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
    And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
    The work of hunters is another thing:
    I have come after them and made repair
    Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
    But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
    To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
    No one has seen them made or heard them made,
    But at spring mending-time we find them there.
    I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
    And on a day we meet to walk the line
    And set the wall between us once again.
    We keep the wall between us as we go.
    To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
    And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
    We have to use a spell to make them balance:
    'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
    We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
    Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
    One on a side. It comes to little more:
    There where it is we do not need the wall:
    He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
    My apple trees will never get across
    And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
    He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
    Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
    If I could put a notion in his head:
    'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
    Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
    Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
    What I was walling in or walling out,
    And to whom I was like to give offense.
    Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
    That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
    But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
    He said it for himself. I see him there
    Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
    In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
    He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
    Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
    He will not go behind his father's saying,
    And he likes having thought of it so well
    He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

    41 min
  • Semi - Film

    Adam Woodyatt is living in a field full of COWS while on a break  from soap. Ian Beale actor Adam has moved into a mobile home after this split from wife of 22 weeks Beverley Sharp.

    He is living in Yorkshire ahead of an upcoming theatre role in Bradford.  Adam and opera star Lesley Garrett will headline an acclaimed  production of My Fair Lady at the Alhambra this autumn.

    Adam said of the role: “I’m not on stage loads but it’s so much fun. The story and characters are ingrained into musical theatre history, as are  the two songs I perform: With a Little Bit of Luck and Get Me to the Church on Time. When it came along I was like, ‘I’ve got to give this a  go’.”

    43 min
  • Semi - Telly

    The most important thing we've learned,

    So far as children are concerned,
    Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
    Them near your television set -  
    Or better still, just don't install
    The idiotic thing at all.
    In almost every house we've been,
    We've watched them gaping at the screen.
    They loll and slop and lounge about,
    And stare until their eyes pop out.
    (Last week in someone's place we saw
    A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)  
    They sit and stare and stare and sit
    Until they're hypnotised by it,
    Until they're absolutely drunk
    With all that shocking ghastly junk.
    Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
    They don't climb out the window sill,
    They never fight or kick or punch,
    They leave you free to cook the lunch
    And wash the dishes in the sink -  
    But did you ever stop to think,
    To wonder just exactly what
    This does to your beloved tot?  
    IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!  
    IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!  
    IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!  
    IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
    HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
    A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!  
    HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!  
    HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!  
    HE CANNOT THINK -  HE ONLY SEES!  
    'All right! ' you'll cry. 'All right! ' you'll say,
    'But if we take the set away,
    What shall we do to entertain
    Our darling children? Please explain! '
    We'll answer this by asking you,
    'What used the darling ones to do?  
    'How used they keep themselves contented
    Before this monster was invented? '
    Have you forgotten? Don't you know?  
    We'll say it very loud and slow:
    THEY... USED... TO... READ! They'd READ and READ,
    AND READ and READ, and then proceed
    To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!  
    One half their lives was reading books!  
    The nursery shelves held books galore!  
    Books cluttered up the nursery floor!  
    And in the bedroom, by the bed,
    More books were waiting to be read!  
    Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
    Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
    And treasure isles, and distant shores
    Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
    And pirates wearing purple pants,
    And sailing ships and elephants,
    And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
    Stirring away at something hot.
    (It smells so good, what can it be?  
    Good gracious, it's Penelope.)  
    The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
    With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
    And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
    And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
    Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
    And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
    And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
    There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
    Oh, books, what books they used to know,
    Those children living long ago!  
    So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
    Go throw your TV set away,
    And in its place you can install
    A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
    Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
    Ignoring all the dirty looks,
    The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
    And children hitting you with sticks-
    Fear not, because we promise you
    That, in about a week or two
    Of having nothing else to do,
    They'll now begin to feel the need
    Of having something to read.
    And once they start -  oh boy, oh boy!  
    You watch the slowly growing joy
    That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
    They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
    In that ridiculous machine,
    That nauseating, foul, unclean,
    Repulsive television screen!  
    And later, each and every kid
    Will love you more for what you did

    28 min
  • Semi - Gone

    In a dim corner of my room for longer than

    my fancy thinks
    A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me
    through the shifting gloom.

    Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she

    does not stir
    For silver moons are naught to her and naught
    to her the suns that reel.

    Red follows grey across the air, the waves of

    moonlight ebb and flow
    But with the Dawn she does not go and in the
    night-time she is there …

    47 min

About slanderhour

From the publisher's feed

A weekly pre-sleep, post-thought audio play investigating the nature of latent boredom and the strip-mining of emotional bereavement.