Three minutes after ten, things that probably don't work very well on the radio, chapter 463.

I very nearly forgot to take my mask off then. Do you think you would have noticed? Should we find out? Should we do this? Should we do a live experiment on the radio? Keith says yes, you definitely would be able to notice. So what I'll do? Should I do a poem or something like that and then take the mask on and off in the middle of it? Okay, a bit of Larkin or a bit of Blake?

What do we want?

Blake or larking?

A bit of Larkin or a bit of Blake? What do we want? Blake or Larkin? A bit of Blake, is it? Okay. I wonder through each chartered street near where the chartered Thames does flow and mark on every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every man, in every infant's cry of fear. That's quite obviously a mask, isn't it?

Okay, well, we won't be making that mistake again,

but I think it's important that you witness this research live on the radio

lest you think I just phone it in or make it up as I go along.

Which is an accusation that is occasionally leveled at Boris Johnson,

the Prime Minister and his handling of the coronavirus.

Crisis.

So, before we get stuck in to what we think stroke feel,

and I don't know about you, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to tell the difference between what I think and what I feel.

I'm not obviously an epidemiologist or a virologist, depending on what side of the debate you on.

Neither am I a spectator writer,

which apparently is an equal and opposite level of expertise and understanding for some corners

of the political establishment. But I know what I want. I want to relax. I want to be together.

Do you remember that advert? We just want to be together. But what do I think

and what do I feel are increasingly hard to separate. And obviously, this is a program where we're

normally at enormous pains to keep those two things separate. Otherwise, you know, the really

bad stuff happens like Brexit. But you are all human and it is human, I think, sometimes for your thoughts and your feelings, your desires to become conflated.

And then you fall into the, I was going to say trap, but that's possibly too harsh a word.

...