Around this beautiful house. Soon noticed, as we were walking around, there were lots of hours. And so we got in the car to drive back to this field from langdon and suicide. I know Alan was not okay. I'm just, but I didn't know that he was no mythologist as well. Because he told they had written this book about hours. And then we sort of put two and two together. And realize that our Ghana was the Alan government. And he wasn't a normal father. In fact, he knows a very little amount, but. I don't think he did from that time on. We were good friends, because we just got on well together. And then from them, I obviously heard about Alan's books and we started reading them. And have never stopped since. Yeah, he's always very interesting about the forms of friendships. He doesn't tend to form franchises with other writers, but he put him in a particle physicist or an archeologist or a historian. He's very interesting. Should we have the first clip? Can we hear the first? We've got some clips to see now. I should just say from two sources. One is from the book itself some readings from the book by Robert Pao. The actor who was at Manchester grammar school with Alan and indeed matches the gram school is the book is dedicated to MGS. And also some clips of Alan speaking to Liz his daughter who's here this evening. Shall we have the first clip of a bit from the novel? Joe let go of the post. He flung himself against the sour into the coat onto the vial beneath. And the man opened his arms to let him in, but did not hold him. Joe roared. He yelled, he wretched. Then he pushed himself away and crawled to the opposite seal and sat. His wrists on his knees, shaking. His head drooped. It was a hurl of thrombo a winter, said the man. A lumpa hummock of night. Nothing more. Joe could not speak. But summer is nearly come. Joe lifted his head. Chaco. Treacle. Walker. Treacle walker, I have in this land. What sort of a name is that? I heal. He. Made better. All things save jealousy. Which none can. He opened his bag and took out a bone. It was a shin. Narrow, old, hollow, yellow, crazed with black lines, polished, and holes cut in, and has slit at one end. What's that? Said Joe. I made it from a man that sang. Can I ever see? Treacle walker passed the bone to Joe. He held it and felt it shape. What's it for? Jekyll walker took back the bone, put his mouth to the slit, his fingers on the holes, closed his eyes and played. The chimney filled with two. It was a tune with wings, trampling things, tightened strings, buggers and bogles and brags on their feet. The man in the oak, sickness and fever that set in long-lasting sleep the whole great world with the sweetness of sound, the bone did play. Joe sapp and did not speak. The chimney was silent. It is a way for him to sing now. Said treacle walker. Can I ever go? Treacle walker passed the bone across the fire basket. What must I do? Hold, and breathe. Joe put the bone to his lips. Like this. He blew. The notes came, pure. The call of a cuckoo. Across the valley, a cuckoo answered. Did you hear that? Cuckoo. Erica, let me throw this to you. Can you give us a sort of a pricy of the book? I mean, tell us, tell us what we're just we know there's a boy and we know there's a man. What else do we need to know? You don't want to know too much. I don't think it's true. If you haven't read it, there's a boy. There's a man, there's a correspondence between worlds. What I feel about Allen's work is that he shows us that the connection between this world and the other world is right in front of us. If we choose to look, if we choose to step into it. And the two worlds are like a palimpsest. Existing on top of one another. And it's the story of a boy discovering how he can exist inside time and outside of time and how the objects that are all around him connect him to magic. That's what I would say about this book. I have to say that's a pretty brilliant person. Sorry. That doesn't make you want to read the book. I think nothing will. I'm interested in the objects that sort of string through the book. I mean, we'll come on to we'll come on to the bodies a bit later on. But right from the beginning that there are objects. There's the bone of a sheep and treacle walker has a bag that was bob about the name treacle walker in the middle. All of these objects, as you could see that Alan was fingering various the Dober, which is a marble. These are real objects. As an archeologist, I mean, is that something that sort of you respond to? Absolutely. And that flute you've just heard about really exists. It dates to the Bronze Age and it is made of human bone. This is a piece of research that was done by colleagues of ours recently and it was found in a burial. And archeologists have spent a long time working out how to read time through the layers that build up with a cake and we go back through those lenses through time. But that's not how time comes at us. Time comes at us, it erupts out of those layers and objects come to us and touch us from different times. And so what I love about the objects in this book is that that's what they're doing. They come out of all sorts of different times. The child's time, time, long past, who knows time in the future. And they are the points of connection that create these moments of encounter, where time is loosened and you feel its presence with you. So the flute, the marble, the donkey stone, which for people who don't know what it is, it's a byproduct of the cement industry that kept housewives busy to polish their doorstep and show that they were good industrious women who looked after the threshold now in Alan's hands. Something completely other because of course his house is resonant with these objects that are hidden under the threshold the half and in the chimney that are about keeping your house safe from things that should not enter. And the care you show to the house is part of how you keep things out or let things in and show your care for a place. So the materials, the objects are about the things that one must do to care for the places that one lives in. And we are just that momentary inhabitants of them. There are other people who have come before and will come after..