Thursday 11 December 2014

On This Day

Five Years Ago

Results were announced of the competition held by Dymvale Borough Council to name the new road being built for housing development at Fivetrees. The winning entry (rewarded with a week's free parking at any council car park within the borough) was 12 year old Kylie Throng, who came up with the name of New Road. There were seven other entries, including Desolation Row, Flood Meadows, Abomination Avenue and Whowantsthisanyway.

Ten Years Ago

A legal settlement involving undisclosed sums of money was reached between publishers Thorley Pieves and the award-winning writer Lydia Stobleigh, acclaimed by critics for her courageous and innovative approach to the written word. At issue had been the publication of Ms Stobleigh's ground-breaking work, a 589-page contemplation of self, written as one sentence, all in lower case and devoid of punctuation. The title of this volume should have read 'Impenetrable', but instead left the printer's and was displayed in every bookshop bearing the title 'I'm Penetrable'. This, claimed the publishers, was only a small change of text that had helped sales enormously.

Twenty Years Ago

An appreciative gathering filled the church at Fickleshole in Kent at the memorial service held to celebrate the life and work of pioneer film-maker Norman Throbbing. Warm tributes were paid to a man described as 'unique', 'one-off' and 'like no other'. Those attending were treated to a selection of the well-known pieces to come from the Throbbing Productions Studio and find a home in the BBC Interlude archive. These included Leaf Falling, Ball Rolling, and Paint Drying, along with the full, uncut version of his famous sequence Bake-Off, featuring two potatoes in a glass-fronted oven. 

1 comment:

  1. Whilst its nice to see Throbbing's work celebrated, I'm surprised that his superlative noir classic "Earwax" didn't get a mention.

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