Announcements

It seems at next years exhibition (16th and 17th January 2010, put it in your diary) we will have access to a public address system.

This begs the question, Who do we get to make the announcements ?

Obviously it needs to be someone with a suitable "broadcast" voice who can enunciate properly and doesn't sound embarrassed to have been given the microphone. Not someone who sees it as an opportunity to order the crowds around either.

My though was that there are a whole load of suitable people to be found in sunny Stratford-upon-Avon. Specifically the RSC. After all they only work in the evening so they've nothing better to do during daylight hours have they ?

Then it occured to me. Wonderful though the diction may be, the luvvies will probably insist on fiddling with the script to make it sound more Shakespeare. Yet by chance, the man himself wrote quite a lot that is suitable for our use:

• P4, or not P4: that is the question.
  The slings and arrows of outrageous tolerances,
  Or to take arms against a sea OO.
• If you prick us with a knife do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If we mistake liquid flux for tea do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not go on the interweb and moan in forums?
• There are more things in the bottom of my toolbox, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
• But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and the DCC directional lighting system is working.
• A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a Scammel mechanical horse!
• Cry "Havoc," and let the public at the second hand stall.
• All the world's a layout,
  And all the men and women merely Merit figures.
• Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
  For you'll miss that screwdriver when it doesn't come back,
• The finescale modeller doth protest too much, methinks.
• For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
  Hoist with his own petard...
• Now is the winter of our discontent
  Made glorious summer by this trip to York show,
• Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
  Or close the wall up with some Slaters products!
• Is this a scalpel which I see before me,
  The handle toward my hand?
  Ouch, wrong end !
• The attempt and not the deed
  Confounds us.
• By the pricking of my thumbs,
  A new brass loco this way comes.
• Out, damned paint spot! Out, I say!
• But love for the GWR is blind, and lovers cannot see
  The layouts all look the same to me.
• Misery acquaints a man with strange club members.
• If music be the food of love, fit a sound unit in that loco;
• Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
• It is a wise father that knows his own child would really like a train set.
• There is nothing either good or bad,
  but thinking makes it finescale.
• Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
• Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow but the show is now closed so GO HOME !
  

Bonus points if you can spot the ones I didn't have to rewrite...