It was enough to suggest a few ideas for my lecture, and I worked them into the draft. With that done I set it aside and took another look at it a week later. This was about a month before I was due to depart for Dearth. During the remaining time I went back to it occasionally and gradually expanded it, changing the order of words a little, adding more ideas, deleting passages here and there, thinking up other examples to illustrate the theme. I read it aloud twice.

Then there was the visual presentation, the slideshow. Cause for much extra thinking and sighing! In recent years many audiences have grown to expect a slideshow of images, which ostensibly illustrate the talk but in reality either duplicate what the speaker is saying or distract from it. The software is widely available and easy to use, so no excuse there.

But I continue to dislike it. At one talk I gave three years ago I illustrated it with some stunningly graphic scene-of-crime images taken by police photographers. Halfway through I noticed that most of the people in the front row were staring glassy eyed at the screen, no longer listening to what I was saying. That was not the idea at all! Ever since then I have tried to assemble images that complement what I am saying, but are neither too interesting nor distracting.

The Historical Society said they saw a slideshow as an important part of my presentation, so I put together what I hoped would be some appropriate accompanying images.

I had timed my speech to last three-quarters of an hour. That was longer than I would normally aim for, but Professor Wendow insisted in one of his communications that the conference required at least that much material. The longer of my two practice readings had come in at forty minutes, so I planned to pause briefly between paragraphs, take sips of water, and so on.

I noticed that Professor Wendow still had not shown up, or at least was nowhere in sight of the podium.

So, I began. I proceeded slowly. I had removed my wristwatch and placed it on the lectern where I could see it. After twenty minutes I was halfway through, more or less on target. Once when I paused to take a sip from my glass of water I was able to half turn towards my two interlocutors, and received reassuring smiles from them both.