Bad Machinery by John Allison for August 14, 2024

The last time Mr Knott’s little house by the wind farm appeared was in the Bobbins prequel story “Expecting To Fly”. The eyepatch was new, and it was a different redhead — a young Shelley Winters — here to try to convince Mr Knott to let Ryan come back to school.

However, Ryan hadn’t actually been expelled; he’d dropped out after taking the blame for the incident that produced the eyepatch, in order to protect his friend Tim Jones (we’ll see Tim tomorrow, as it happens), who had actually caused it while trying to tutor Ryan in science. Ryan got a job at Percy’s pea factory (home of the fart signal), and he languished there for years until eventually Shelley and Amy dragged him out of the squalor he was living in and got him set on the track to being who he is today. Also Amy married him and bore his child.

A couple decades later, things have come full circle, and Ryan’s the teacher, at the school he dropped out of, come to try to convince Mr Knott to come back to school.

Mr. Knott seems to be in his own sort of thought corner.

Mrs. Lord has a lot of nerve complaining about high hemlines.

In Claire Denis’s bold adaptation of Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor (Beau Travail), she uses excepts from Britten’s opera adaptation in the score. Highly recommended.

I don’t care much for Britten but he came after 1825. In retirement I’ve listened to a lot of music. If it’s British music I go for Purcell.

I love Benjamin Britten.

I’m not so sure that an airplane is a good idea for someone who has had heart problems. But it’s certainly less stressful than running a school.