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Coffin Liquor by John Lancaster,' read by Toby Jones.

"'Monday.

"'I realised that things had gone wrong as soon as I arrived at my hotel.

"'The receptionists spoke no English.

"'Only when I showed them my passport

"'did they seem to accept, with with reluctance that I had a booking.

I was given a key and took my own bag upstairs.

The room was a cramped, over-furnished space with thin brown walls.

On the desk was an envelope of conference materials,

including a laminated pass on a lanyard and a printed program.

It was at that point that I realised I had been enticed to attend the event under a misleading prospectus.

The first talk on the first morning was titled,

What string theorists can learn from Vlad the Impaler? The first talk on the first morning was titled, What String Theor-Thererer,

narrative, belief, and the imminence of the imperceptible?

The other events were given similar names

and had the same preposterous emphasis

on the idea of an engagement or conversation between areas that are manifestly

questions of proof and fact, on the one hand, and on the other side, a degenerate mass of

...