Ah! I thought this was available for a whole year, but was told today it's only available for listening until 29-Mar-2013. Yikes, that's tomorrow!
Listen online to all 6 episodes here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r522y/episodes/player
And if Neil Gaiman's fantastic story of a man unexpectedly pulled into the world of London Below brought to life is not incentive enough: Benedict Cumberbatch plays a major character.
You know what I'll be listening to while processing entries for Year End.
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Does Hope Help?
It was supposed to be fun. Or a version of fun that teachers attempt to convince the students. The contest / game was for each of the squares of the 10 x 10 square grid to be filled with one character or punctuation mark to make a 100 "item" essay. So far so good. The topic, however, was something along the lines of "This is what I hope for the future".
My (early) teenage self had a fit: What is the point of this?! My Chinese class teacher didn't understand why I was frustrated (angry?), and probably thought I was lazy in not wanting to do the work to enter into the contest. In some ways, it was the opposite.
Looking back, I probably wasn't even quite sure of the emotion I was feeling, only that it was strong and repelling. In my brain, however, was this tangle of how ridiculous it was to be writing about hopes and dreams*, rather than doing something actually practical to work towards a goal. What's the point in hoping? And I couldn't get past it or express it properly.
After so many years and doing so much hoping (sometimes for miracles), I'd been convinced of the power and prescribing to the phrase "Audacity of Hope", and believed it was hope that was getting me out of tough times, this episode was far from mind.
But then I listened to Four Thought: Sally Kettle's "Does Hope Help?" . This was exactly what I wanted to say at Chinese school! (And yes, exactly, because it's expressed fully and in such an elegant way.)
I still think hope is valuable (I've seen how needed it is), but I also reminded that hope rather than action is just procrastination.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it is again a balance and knowing the right time for a which.
* This is what my brain had translated the contest into at the time, and I admit now there might be a huge translation error.
My (early) teenage self had a fit: What is the point of this?! My Chinese class teacher didn't understand why I was frustrated (angry?), and probably thought I was lazy in not wanting to do the work to enter into the contest. In some ways, it was the opposite.
Looking back, I probably wasn't even quite sure of the emotion I was feeling, only that it was strong and repelling. In my brain, however, was this tangle of how ridiculous it was to be writing about hopes and dreams*, rather than doing something actually practical to work towards a goal. What's the point in hoping? And I couldn't get past it or express it properly.
After so many years and doing so much hoping (sometimes for miracles), I'd been convinced of the power and prescribing to the phrase "Audacity of Hope", and believed it was hope that was getting me out of tough times, this episode was far from mind.
But then I listened to Four Thought: Sally Kettle's "Does Hope Help?" . This was exactly what I wanted to say at Chinese school! (And yes, exactly, because it's expressed fully and in such an elegant way.)
I still think hope is valuable (I've seen how needed it is), but I also reminded that hope rather than action is just procrastination.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it is again a balance and knowing the right time for a which.
* This is what my brain had translated the contest into at the time, and I admit now there might be a huge translation error.
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