As some of you will know this blog is (usually if I am not too busy and pissed off) available as an audio podcast. I don't know how many people listen to it: I suspected not very many when I stopped doing it for a fortnight and hardly anyone complained. But after the two week point had passed more people complained and I decided to start up again. I record it quickly, on my phone and don't edit it or start again unless I make some terrible error. In fact a terrible error would stay in, but if I just read it inelegantly or miss an emphasis in the first 30 seconds I sometimes delete and record again. But mainly I don't look back.
Yesterday I'd caught up with a couple of the audioblogs including the
one for the 3rd November. I had had a couple of beers in the evening and (as has been the case a couple of times recently) found that that put me in the mood for working, so I'd recorded the podcasts and then worked until 11.30pm on the second draft of my second volume of Warming Up "The Box Lady and Other Pesticles" which might be out soonish.
I had sat on my leather sofa to record the podcasts, so when someone tweeted to ask about the "unusual noise" on the second of the two recordings I assumed that I had been moving around on the settee and made some strange fart like sounds. But today a couple of people got in touch to ask what whether I had been whacking off during the podcast. "It's just the sofa," I rebutted, but then thought it was odd that that had made a masturbatory sound. So I thought I'd better break the habit of a life-time and listen back to myself and check all was well. And weirdly at one minute and one second into a slightly dull-voiced reading of the non-bonfire night I'd been to a strange and rapid rubbing sound kicks in. If it is masturbatory in nature then it is quite frantic and a little dry sounding (someone compared it to the sound of someone attempting to light a fire with sticks). I certainly don't recall masturbating during this recording and my voice remains remarkably calm, measured and unaffected given the speed of manipulation. There's a slightly ethereal quality to the sound which made me wonder if perhaps a ghost had become excited by me reading out a blog and decided to rub one out (even a ghoul has needs, probably moreso than the rest of us as they no longer have a body and thus can't really have conventional sex, even if they found someone willing to fuck the, - even a ghost doesn't want to screw a ghost), something that would never be picked up by human ears (again otherwise we'd hear nothing else) but might somehow be magically picked up by recording equipment (like that bit in Sixth Sense, only much louder).
I hoped it was a ghost. Maybe I have managed to divide my psyche so successfully with the snooker podcast that Me1 could be calmly reading whilst Me2, unbeknownst to me or Me1 was strangling his chicken. I am not the kind of man who would deliberately put out a recording of my onanistic activities, and if I was the kind of man who would do that (and I am not) then I would put out a video version so you could all see the excellent way I do it and the faces I pull during the process. Has there ever been a celebrity sex tape with only one participant? I might have found a niche market.
I can be a bit of a fidgeter and sometimes I nervously jiggle my leg around when I am seated. I didn't notice myself doing this during the podcast, but then I usually wouldn't be conscious of my limbic tic. Was this the sound? But if I can jiggle my leg without realising who knows what other horrors I am capable of.
I prefer to think that it was a ghost (perhaps one in the machine) and I was covered in a strange ectoplasm after the recording so that's probably the most likely explanation.
Will the possibility of supernatural or superpervy activity be the thing that finally breaks this podcast into the mainstream. I hope it will at least feature in lectures and talks about ghosts and that ghost hunters will be slowing it down and listening intently to see if they can hear any utterances from Caspar the wanking ghost.
Anyway today I bought my wife a guitar as a late birthday present (and delightfully one of the other patrons of the shop started playing "Stairway To Heaven" just like in Wayne's World). I then recorded an enjoyable podcast with the great Dave Gorman, which should be out on Tuesday and which includes a long discussion about a convoluted review he once got (not that he'd read it before) which I think might be one of my favourite moments from the entire series.
There were some sound issues early on, suggesting that I have angered ghosts with my flippant "Have you or your siblings ever seen a ghost?" query. But if there are any sounds of masturbation over the podcast then I can assure you it is nothing to do with me. I did jerk off all the way through the 90 minutes chat, but made sure I did so quietly so that no one at home would know. That might have set off some ghosts and they might have started wanking too - I don't know. But I have a feeling that if anything the sight of me stroking my pepparami would probably put most ghosts off. Me wanking is the ghost-wanking equivalent of a scarecrow. And if I am ever discovered scattering my seed in a field then that will be the explanation. I was trying to stop ghosts wanking on the crops. Will that hold up in a court of law? I suspect so.
