I’m on The Far Side of the World with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin; it’s the tenth in the series and it looks as if it may not see me out of lockdown. A recurring trope, sorry that’s tautologous but my friend in Ukraine likes to expand her vocabulary and she may be unfamiliar with “trope” and “tautologous”, is the music they play in the evenings, Jack on a violin and Stephen, usually, on a cello.
In posts passim the theorbo and timpan have cropped up. Now a friend has introduced me to the theremin. It’s played by a thereminist, of course, and is the 1920s invention of Monsieur Theremin, naturellement. What makes it unusual, unique perhaps, is that the thereminist plays the theremin without touching it. Incroyable … pas possible … dit-moi un autre … je ne suis pas né hier, etc.
Equally incredibly there have, so far, been twenty-one series, more than 120 episodes, of Midsomer Murders. It started in 1997, is still running and I’ve never seen a single one. This is not a digression because for the first thirteen series the theme tune was played on a theremin.