A Terribly Strange Bed

Last night I was listening to a show on the radio called Classic Tales of Horror, which was a reading of a story called "A Terribly Strange Bed" by Wilkie Collins about an English tourist in Paris who wins big at a disreputable gambling den and unwisely accepts the hospitality of a complete stranger. I also listened to the first part of a radio dramatisation of Murder on the Orient Express based on the novel by Agatha Christie. I also listened to a couple of radio adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the first one Holmes is called in to investigate when a dead man is found with some plans for a top secret submarine, and in the second Holmes appears to be dying of a fatal tropical illness.

Much later on I listened to a radio adaptation of a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone called "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" by Richard Matheson, in which a nervous flyer, on a turbulant plane journey, is horrified to see a monsterous creature on the wing of the plane messing around with the engine. To make matters worse, he is the only one who can see it. The show was one of the most famous episodes of the original TV series with William Shatner as the frightened flyer, and was also adapted as a segment of the 1982 Twilight Zone movie. The show worked really well on the radio, partly because you did't have the unconvincing monster from the TV version which, according to Matheson, looked like "a surly teddy bear."

It was another really dull and ordinary day at work today. I got a steak pie and chips on my way back home today, so that was quite nice.