KEIN GEBURTSTAG IN DEUTSCHLAND!

Tomorrow is my birthday and I should have been celebrating the arrival of my fifty-seventh year in the city of Diez, Germany, where - in the Duke’s Castle (11th Century with 17th Century additions) - I was to have been a guest at the annual meeting of the German Tolkien Society.


But, alas and alack, it is not to be.

As W C Fields observed in one of his movies: “Things ---- HAPPENED!” And, in my case, they were unhealthy things of the sort not to be much relished at any time, let alone in your birthday week…

So, all I can do is send many and profound apologies to my disappointed friends in der Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft who have been amazingly understanding and sympathetic and to whom, if I had one, I would gladly raise a stein of something frothily appropriate!

Ho, hum…

Anyway,on a brighter note: tomorrow sees (or hears) the second episode of ‘Ain’t No Mickey Mouse Music’ take to the airwaves on BBC Radio 2 at 7.00 pm with songs and music from, among other movies, ‘Dumbo’, ‘Bambi’ and ‘Fantasia’.

Incidentally, the darling reviewer who, last week, described the series as “gorgeous” is now calling it “jubilant” which, let’s face it, is as good and healthy a birthday-boostering word as one could truly wish for!