Sounds Unfamiliar

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School holidays mean changed patterns of life for parents. This week I found myself using the bus to get to and from work most days. I noticed that Fr Z (whom God preserve!) had a podcast interview with Fr Tim Finigan so I decided to download it for the journey.

A minor point is to download Fr Z's podcasts to an mp3 player which has a fast forward facility (mine doesn't), otherwise having heard his introduction to a piece by the Seraphic Doctor and then the reading itself in English, you then have to listen in Latin as well; if you press "next track" you skip the rest of the piece completely and then have to start again from the beginning.

However, the greatest shock was that neither Fr Z nor Fr Finigan sounded like themselves. I've never heard the voice of either of them, of course, but "knew" what they sound like from having seen their pictures and having read what they've written. And they sound completely wrong.

This must have been a lot more common in the days before radio and TV - that you build a 3D image of somebody from their words, or maybe their words and a picture - and I find it's rather nice that the Internet takes us back, rather than forwards.

I suppose it would make a good meme: describe five well known bloggers (or their voices and accents) whom you've never met based purely on what you've seen in their blogs; but the possibility of offending people (however unwittingly) would never be far away.