In 1934, Rudolf Bing was an experienced opera house manager who had recently lost his job in Germany as Nazi influence grew.
"The next couple of months were the darkest I knew", he later wrote in his autobiography '5000 Nights at the Opera'. But then he received "a most remarkable commission" from conductor Fritz Busch.
He was invited to help organise John Christie's new Mozart opera festival at Glyndebourne. Christie had built an opera house on his estate, contacting Fritz Busch who, in turn, had insisted he worked with artistic director Carl Ebert. Ebert and Busch organised some of the principal singers before approaching Bing to employ the rest of the performing company.
"Everything about this enterprise seemed crazy", wrote Rudolf Bing Working from his home in Vienna, he "managed to interest some excellent artists in the Glyndebourne project, largely, of course, because it involved working with Busch and Ebert". As the season approached, Rudolf Bing wanted to learn more about this curious English opera house. In May 1934 he decided to go on his own - "nobody said anything about paying my expenses" - leaving home in Vienna with his wife Nina, who stayed temporarily with her family in Paris while Rudolf took a ferry to Newhaven.
In his book, Rudolf Bing paints a vivid picture of those early days at Glyndebourne - and his later time as General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He talks of John Christie, his colleagues, the house and Christie's butler Childs. "On one of the first occasions that I was an overnight guest at Glyndebourne, Childs woke me with that abominable English custom, the early-morning tea, and said 'Breakfast is at eight-thirty, sir.' I said 'Good morning, Childs. What time is it now?' 'Nine o'clock, sir', he said."
A blue plaque remembering Sir Rudolf Bing can be found overlooking the Glyndebourne lawn, just round the corner from the box office.
This was one of the stars of CES 2019, the big electronics show in Las Vegas. Officially called the LG Signature OLED TV R (or the OLED65R9PUA, if you prefer), this has been described as the world’s first rollable OLED TV. The magic is in the OLED (organic LED) screen, which is designed to roll up. All the technology sits in a long box on the floor from which the screen unrolls upwards, as though you were charming a snake.
The LG rollable TV is likely to go on sale in the second half of this year; pricing hasn’t been confirmed.
The Sony PS-LX310BT turntable is a record player; the kind of thing that would be immediately recognisable to anyone who’s lived through the 1960s, the 70s and the 80s. There’s an automatic tone arm that will find the start of the record for you and picks itself up at the end, there’s an aluminium platter that your records sit on and there’s a dust cover that also provides a bit of extra weight to improve the sound quality.
This turntable plugs into your HiFi system if you have one – but what’s rather neat is that it’ll also connect via Bluetooth to compatible equipment, which means it’ll work wirelessly with your Bluetooth loudspeaker, with your Bluetooth headphones and with the Bluetooth soundbar that sits under your TV. Sony isn’t the first company to do this – but because it’s one of the big names in audio, it’s worth paying attention.
The PS-LX310BT will be available from April this year, it’s likely to sell for around £200 in the UK.
The Lovot – from ‘love’ and ‘robot’ – has been created by a Japanese company called Groove X. It’s a kind of electronic pet, which makes it a successor to the Tamagotchi and the Sony Aibo.
Lovot looks like a cross between a penguin and a teddy bear. It trundles around the floor, following you and waving its little arms like it wants to be picked up... because that’s exactly what it does want. Lovot has been programmed to behave like a little creature that needs affection. Give it a cuddle and it’ll probably fall asleep, leaving you feeling like a proud parent.
It’s expected to go on sale in around a year’s time; expect to pay somewhere around €5,000 for a pair that'll interact with each other.
Foldimate had a fully working prototype of their laundry-folding machine at CES this year, although exactly what happens inside is a bit of a mystery. The company says a typical washing-machine load of 25 items will take about five minutes in total to fold.
You feed each item in at the top - shirts, t-shirts, blouses, trousers, towels, pillowcases - and a little robot arm will pull them inside. The machine then automatically adjusts the folding method based on the item type, its size and your preferences, which means it can fit the folding to suit your shelf or drawer size. Each item is then dispensed in a neat pile at the bottom.
The company hopes to be producing the real thing by the end of this year for $980, which works out at around €850.
Christmas is on the way and, if you’re a meat-eater, there’s a good chance you’ll be cooking a turkey or maybe even a goose for dinner. One of the challenges of roasting anything big is making sure the inside is cooked. What you need is a cooking thermometer – but how about a wireless cooking thermometer that connects to your phone or your tablet?
Meater looks like a regular stainless steel meat thermometer but without a display, It connects via Bluetooth to your phone, which means it has a range of up to 10 metres from your oven, although there’s a boosted version called Meater Plus that’ll work up to 50m away.
First, you install the special Meater app on your phone. Next, you charge up your thermometer and then you link it to your phone. The charger doesn’t plug into the mains; it uses a regular AAA battery that should work for up to 100 charges.
Stick the thermometer into the meat, open up the app and choose the type of meat you're cooking (or, indeed, whether you're cooking poultry or fish). You then select the cut of meat and the associated temperature, so if you like your lamb 'pink'.
The Meater app then gives you an estimated cooking time (and, perhaps obviously, will alert you when the meat is cooked). You can also check progress from the sofa – or the other side of the kitchen. In fact, if you use one of Amazon's Alexa smart home devices, you can link the two together and ask Alexa how your roast dinner is coming along.
Pricing for the regular version is £79 / €89 and for Meater Plus is £99 / €109.
Here’s a bit of nostalgia. It’s 24 years since Sony launched its original PlayStation games console in Japan. For Christmas this year, Sony is bringing back the PlayStation Classic, with 20 games from the 1990s built in. Except this new PlayStation will be almost half the size of the original.
What you get is the console (it looks like a shrunken version of the original but doesn’t need any software disks), two controllers (again, scaled-down replicas of the originals) and an HDMI cable to plug it into your television. All that’s missing is a USB power adaptor, which seems a bit mean but I’m sure you’ve got one kicking around from an old phone.
And then you’ll be able to play classics like Final Fantasy VII, Tekken 3, Ridge Racer Type 4, Grand Theft Auto and so on. These aren’t updated versions of the original games: they ARE the original games.
PlayStation Classic launched this week in Japan, the US and Europe, with an anticipated UK price of £89.99 and a European price of €99.99.
About 20 years ago, one of the best gifts you could give the person who had almost everything was Big Mouth Billy Bass. He looked like a stuffed fish mounted on a wooden plaque but could sing 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' and, rather disturbingly, would also turn to face you.
Well, Billy Bass is back. The company that made him – Gemmy Industries – has updated Billy with a Bluetooth connection and compatibility with the Amazon Alexa digital assistant.
This means is you can now use him to play all types of music, not just his theme song. But better than that, Billy can now answer any questions you ask Alexa. If you have an Alexa device, you can connect it wirelessly to Billy Bass and Alexa’s voice will come out of him. Billy’s little fishy mouth even moves when Alexa talks. Alexa, what’s the weather? Alexa, what’s the temperature of my turkey?
At the moment 'new Billy' only seem to be available in the USA: I’ve seen him on Amazon for $39.99 plus shipping.
4. Monopoly Fortnite edition
Fortnite is a video game launched last year by a company called Epic Games. In the game, you and 99 other people are dropped onto a cartoonish island. Your aim is pretty simple: survive until the end of the game.
But I’m not here to talk about the online game. What I'd like to introduce is the real-world antidote to Fortnite. It's made by Hasbro, the company behind much-loved board game Monopoly, where you throw dice, move around a board, buy houses and try to make more money than anyone else.
Now they’ve invented the Fortnite Edition of Monopoly. Instead of moving round the streets of London, you move around the Fortnite island. Instead of earning money, you collect Health Points. You build walls, not hotels, and every time you pass Go you unleash the Storm, which can take health Points from your opponents. Ultimately, the person left with Health Points at the end of the game is the winner. If you’re a Monopoly fan and you want to get the rest of your video-playing family into it, this could be just what you’re looking for.
It’s suitable for two to seven players, age 13 and up. Pricing is around £25 (€28).
The music on my Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' show this afternoon included:
Pentatonix: Can't Sleep Love
Harriet: Afterglow
Rufus Wainwright: Across The Universe
Johnny Cash: Hurt
Mary Gauthier: I Drink
Ward Thomas: Guilty Flowers
Show of Hands: Walk With Me
Ellie Goulding: How Long Will I Love You
Justin Hayward: The Best Is Yet To Come
Norrie Paramor and the BBC Midland Radio Orchestra: Thank You For The Music
The music on today's Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' show included:
Beth Nielsen Chapman: Almost Home
Jamie Cullum: I Could Have Danced All Night
Julie Andrews: Just You Wait
Frank Sinatra: Get Me To The Church On Time
Beyonce: Love On Top
BBC Midland Radio Orchestra: Go West
Garth Hewitt: Oscar Romero
Was (Not Was): Walk The Dinosaur
Amy Winehouse: Tears Dry On Their Own
Celine Dion: Here There And Everywhere
Feist: Mushaboom
Britney Spears: Everytime
Barbra Streisand: Taking A Chance On Love
Here's a list of the songs I played during the 'Talking Culture' show on Rocket FM Lewes today:
The Whitlams: Thank You (For Loving Me At My Worst)
Katie Melua: The Closest Thing To Crazy
David Lee Roth: Just A Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody
Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Be My Baby
Paul McCartney: Silly Love Songs
Sara Bareilles: Love Song
Michael Nyman: Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds After The Fire: One Rule For You
Tracey Ullman: Breakaway
Peter Skellern: Hold On To Love Mister Solo: Number One Jill Sobule: I Kissed A Girl
Jimmy Cliff: Wonderful World, Beautiful People
Here's a list of the songs I played during the 'Talking Culture' show on Rocket FM Lewes today:
Paul Simon: Wristband
Chris Farlowe: I Can’t Get No Satisfaction
Matt Dusk: Please Please Me
Techno Twins: Falling In Love Again
Juliet Turner: Toxic
Emma Bunton: Downtown
Caravan Palace: Lone Digger
Lena Zavaroni: Penny Lane
Eva Cassidy: Cheek to Cheek
Tricky: Ponderosa
Barenaked Ladies: Running Out Of Ink
Right Said Fred: Deeply Dippy
Pink: Just Give Me A Reason
Kate Bush: Hammer Horror
Cilla Black: You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’
Much like an electric toothbrush, this is powered by a rechargeable battery – but that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. The Amabrush looks more like a gum shield crossed with a dummy. Never mind the looks, though: this, the inventors reckon, will clean your teeth in just ten seconds.
The mouthpiece is flexible to fit different sized mouths and is made of antibacterial silicone. There are bristles on both sides to clean your teeth – and you can clean the brush itself by rinsing it under a tap. The bristle part of the mouthpiece will need replacing every three months or so at a cost of around €6.
If there’s more than one person in your house who wants to use the Amabrush, each can buy their own mouthpiece and share the vibrating control unit to keep costs down.
The company is currently taking pre-orders (via crowd-funding site Indiegogo) with an estimated delivery date of February next year. Pricing for a basic unit is €89 + €15 shipping to Europe, although you can pay a bit more and get a version that uses a wireless charger instead of the plug-in type.
Smarter FridgeCam
For a few years some companies have been talking about a ‘smart fridge’ that’ll help you keep track of the food you buy. Instead of designing a new fridge, one company has built a wireless camera that’ll fit inside almost any fridge... which is a whole lot cheaper. The company is called Smarter, the device is the FridgeCam – and the UK price when it comes out next month is expected to be just under £100.
What does FridgeCam let you do? Well, it connects to an app on your phone and lets you check the contents of your fridge from pretty much anywhere. As well as doing this, it’ll also help you track expiry dates, it’ll let you know when things are running out and it can even suggest recipes based on the things you’ve bought.
As well as reminding you when expiry dates are getting close, it can add products to your online shopping basket when they’re used up and it can even remind you to buy items if you’re going past the local shops.
It’s not actually a live camera – you can’t look inside your fridge when the door’s closed, not least because the light goes out – what is does is take photos when you put something in or take it out. This means its rechargeable battery lasts for a few months before you need to take the camera out and recharge it.
The loudspeaker in your phone isn't very big, so if you want better quality or more volume, you need to connect your phone to something else. Using Bluetooth technology means you don't have wires; you just need to keep the phone nearby.
That's all very well, but sometimes it's not convenient to keep your phone nearby. Perhaps you're worried about your phone getting wet or being dropped. In which case - drum roll, please - you need the Drifter. It's a wireless loudspeaker that can play music independently from your phone. How does it do that? Well, it has a 16GB hard drive for storing thousands of songs, plus WiFi and Bluetooth for connecting. There's a touch-screen for controlling it, there's even a built-in camera if you want to take photos. The whole thing is waterproof and is in a rugged case, so you can download your music and play it almost anywhere.
In the words of the company, "Stikbox is the first full-length selfie stick built into a smartphone case".
This is a 20-inch (53cm) selfie stick built into a phone case, so you don't need to carry a separate device for self-portraits. At the moment it's available for the iPhone 7 - which means your iPhone 6 will also fit - in a choice of black, white or pink, with plans to make them for the iPhone 7 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus.
You slide your phone in; like any decent case you've got access to all the controls; and when you want to take a selfie you simply unfold the stick from the back of the case. It's also protective against everyday bumps and there's a Bluetooth-controlled button for taking photos. You can even use the case as a stand for watching videos.
This is a smart loudspeaker, which puts it in competition with the Amazon Echo and Google Home. Much like these, it connects to your home broadband and has built-in microphones, so you can control it by talking.
And you probably won't be surprised to hear that HomePod is designed to work closely with Apple iTunes; or, more specifically, with the Apple Music subscription service.
The device is just under seven inches tall, plugs into the mains and connects to your WiFi. Inside there's a little array of speakers to cover the high frequencies and a woofer for the low frequencies. It's also got six microphones, which helps it pick up your voice from any direction and also helps it adjust the music depending on where it is in the room.
What does it actually do? You can tell it to play music by artist, by genre, by album or by song. You can then tell it what you like and it'll learn your preferences. Because these are stored online, your preferences will also be available across all your Apple devices. And you can ask or specific questions about songs: who's singing, who's on bass guitar, that kind of thing.
Plus, because it's all powered by Apple's virtual assistant Siri, you can get news and weather updates, you can send messages and can even control some ‘smart home’ appliances. The magic words are "Hey, Siri" - without that, it won't do a thing.
Setting it all up doesn't require much more than plugging the speaker into the mains and holding your iPhone next to it.
HomePod will be available for $349 (US) in December; it’ll also launch then in the UK and Australia, although official pricing hasn't been confirmed yet.
Having a key box is a whole lot safer than leaving a spare key under the stone by the back door. They're great for keeping a spare key in case you lock yourself out, leaving a key for family or friends if you're not around - and, of course, very popular for holiday homes and rented property.
This one offers a Bluetooth connection as well; that's the wireless technology better known for connecting the hands-free headset on your phone. So - you fit the box to the wall. You put your spare key inside. And then you've got a couple of choices. There's a ten-digit keypad on the front, so it looks much like a conventional key box with a combination lock. But you can use your phone to set people up with their own code, which they can either enter on the keypad or they can download the Master Lock app onto their phone and do it from there. You can even set codes to expire, so - for example - your plumber can have access but only if they turn up in the morning.
The whole thing runs from a battery that lasts for around two years. It’ll warn you if the battery is running low; if you let the battery run out, you can touch a 9 volt battery on the bottom of the box to ‘jump-start’ it.
You're out camping, you've gone for a drive, you're on a hike - or perhaps you're at work. Anyway, it's coffee time and you'd love an espresso. But carrying an espresso machine around with you just isn't practical. Until now.
The Minipresso NS is a cylinder that's 17.5 centimetres long. It doesn't need electricity. It doesn't need compressed gas or compressed air. It doesn't even need a coffee grinder, because it takes Nespresso coffee pods (or, indeed, any other coffee pod that's the same size). It just needs boiling water.
You put your capsule in, you put your boiling water in - it holds up to 70ml - and then you pump it. A little pump arm pops out the side of the cylinder; it's the same sort of pressure as pumping a bicycle tyre. There's even a cup that unscrews from the end of the device, so you don't need anything else.
The company makes another version that uses conventional ground coffee if you prefer. Either way it'll cost you around £50.
If you were one of the first people to start using the Amazon Kindle eBook reader - or if you still have one of the simpler devices with a monochrome electronic ink screen - you'll know how amazingly long the battery life is, especially when you compare it with a tablet or a phone.
Now along comes a Kickstarter project that aims to give iPhone users the best of both worlds.
It's a case for your iPhone 7 plus. (There's also a version for the regular iPhone 7 but I'm going to talk about the Plus version because it's a little bit more sophisticated.)
The Oaxis InkCase i7 Plus adds an e-ink screen – a second screen to your iPhone. It’s got its own built-in rechargeable battery and lets you read eBooks, check your to-do list, read the news and even display photos. Talking of pictures, because it’s on the back of your phone with the main camera, there’s a selfie assistance feature so you can take better photos of yourself.
What’s also noteworthy is that it's not stupidly big: it just adds 4½mm to the back of your iPhone 7 Plus and only weighs 80g.
It won’t work with every app on your phone – neither would you want it to – but it will show your to-do lists, your calendar, your fitness data, news stories and a clock if you want, as well as supporting the .epub and .txt eBook formats.
If all goes according to plan, regular shipments will start in September. Pricing will be $69 for the regular size and $159 for the plus size but there are discounts on those figures for the next few days while the Kickstarter campaign is still running.
This is due to go on sale next month, with the UK price expected to be £279.99 [around €325].
It’s being called a hybrid console because you can use it at home, plugged into a docking station that connects to your TV, or you can take it out the house like a tablet computer. The 'brains' of the console has rechargeable batteries and a six-inch touch-sensitive screen: imagine a small, fat iPad and you won’t go far wrong
The Nintendo Switch comes with two 'Joy-Con' controllers – part joystick, part controller – that can either be used separately or clipped to the console. So when you’re out and on your own, you clip them to the side of the device and the whole thing is like a giant controller with a screen inside. If you're out and want to play games with someone else, you can have one controller each – depending on the game you’re playing, of course. And when you’re at home and the Nintendo Switch is in its docking console, you can slide the controllers into a separate gamepad accessory that makes them easier to hold and use.
You get the console, the TV dock, two Joy-Con controllers, safety straps to stop you from accidentally throwing the controllers at your TV, the grip that connects both Joy-Con controllers together, the mains adapter and a cable for your TV all in the box. If you want a premium game, you’ll need to buy that separately.
Games can either be bought on cartridges or downloaded online, with over 80 already in the works – although there won’t be that many available when the console launches.
Cordless earphones have been around for a while. First of all you could get them for your HiFi at home but they needed a special transmitter. Next, along came Bluetooth technology, which let you connect to your phone or your tablet – but most of these still have some kind of cable attaching the left earphone to the right earphone.
Then last year Apple announced what it called AirPods, which are separate wireless earphones for the left and the right ear. Although it wasn’t the first company to do this, it’s certainly made this kind of thing more popular.
Which brings us to Braven, an American company that until now was best known for making Bluetooth loudspeakers. They’re getting into Bluetooth earphones – and one of their designs, the Flyte Sport Glo – is completely cord-free, like the Air Pods.
So you’ve got these earphones that hook onto each ear, with batteries that’ll last for around 4 hours before they need recharging. They come with a storage case that contains its own rechargeable battery, so you don’t need to search for a mains socket when you’re out. That case will fully recharge them five times. And, as with other earphones, there’s a built-in microphone so you can make and receive calls.
So what’s so clever about them? Well, first of all there’s a smartphone app that lets you adjust the sound: equalisation, boosting the bass and so on. They’re waterproof, which is what you want if you’re going jogging in the rain. And there’s a bright red laser light in the ear hook, which you can either have on constantly or flashing – it's designed to keep you safer if you’re outside when it’s getting dark. That, very literally, makes these earphones hard to miss.
Pricing is $249.99 [approximately £200 / €230]; they’re expected to be available this summer.
Despite what a lot of people expected, CDs didn’t kill off vinyl records. Not only are many album covers still seen as works of art, there’s a lot to be said for the sound quality you can get from vinyl – as long as you’re using the right kind of turntable and stylus.
I can’t promise that this gadget will please audiophiles but it’ll certainly intrigue them. The LOVE Turntable is being called an ‘Intelligent Record Player’ and also ‘the first high-end, smartphone controlled record player that you can use with or without its app’.
In simple terms, the LOVE turntable plays vinyl records. It’s got a traditional stylus but also connects to Bluetooth and WiFi and can be controlled by a smartphone app. You can connect it to Bluetooth loudspeakers or plug it into your home stereo system with a cable.
But it’s the design of the LOVE turntable that set it apart. There’s a base that’s 7-inches across and a separate arm that sits on top. The arm is 10-inches long and 3½ inches wide, with rounded edges. This contains the stylus and all the technology. Instead of the turntable tuning the record, the base stays still and the arm part moves anticlockwise round the record.
The physical design comes from Yves Behar, who’s been involved with all sorts of things, from fitness trackers to company logos. And the technical specifications look pretty good, too.
It automatically detects the size of your vinyl disc; you then use your phone to play records, to skip or repeat tracks, to change the volume, and even select the right speed. If you prefer, there are some controls on the arm itself.
Inside is a rechargeable battery that will last for 15 album sides before it needs charging.
This is a project on Kickstarter, so the usual terms and conditions apply. The retail price is expected to be $599 but early backers can get one for $319 plus $25 postage – that’s around €320 / £275. Delivery is expected in October.
This is another Kickstarter project - and it's another 'world first', according to the creators. It is, in fact, claiming to be the world's strongest cross-device magnetic cable.
Magnetic connections started to be used for chargers a few years ago. There are two main advantages. Firstly, because the magnet on the device attracts the magnet on the cable, you don’t need to look at what you’re doing. You can connect the charger in the dark or when the socket on the device is at the back and you can’t see it. And then, if you trip over the cable or accidentally pull it, the connection is more likely to simply disconnect rather than pulling your iPad off the table and crashing it on the floor – or breaking the charging plug.
With Volta, you put a little magnetic connector into the socket on your phone: there's one for the microUSB socket used on Android devices and another for the lightning connector on iPhones. You then replace your regular charging cable with the Volta cable.
It’s got gold-plated connections and copper wires, so you should get a good connection. It uses N52-grade Neodymium magnets, which are particularly strong. And it’s covered in three layers of military grade PVC, helping make it 15 times stronger than standard cables, according to the creators.
Retail price for a cable and two connector tips is expected to be 54 Australian dollars plus postage, which works out to around £40 / €45, although there are savings for early backers. Delivery is expected in April.
The guests on my Monday 31st October Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' radio show were all writers: Emily Elgar, Beth Miller, Umi Sinha and Catherine Smith. Music playlist: The Beatles: Paperback Writer The Puppini Sisters: Wuthering Heights Pam Tillis: Mi Vida Loca Cliff Richard: Please Don't Fall In Love Brian Wilson: South American Dean Friedman: Ariel Talitha Rise: Invisible Fishing Clifford T Ward: Wherewithal Katrina Leskanich: They Don't Know Agnetha Faltskog: When You Really Loved Somebody Herb Alpert: Casino Royale
The guests on my Monday 24th October Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' radio show included Tim Rowland from Lewes Theatre Youth Group as well as Jo Beth Young and Martyn Barker from locally-based band Talitha Rise.
Music playlist: Paul Simon: Kodachrome Paula Cole: I Don't Want To Wait Ashley Tisdale & Lucas Grabeel: What I've Been Looking For Neil Sedaka: Next Door To An Angel Britannia High Cast: Start of Something Eurythmics: Who's That Girl? Frank Stallone: Beyond The Sea Talitha Rise: Deadwood Nellie McKay: David Talitha Rise: Magpies
Music playlist: Anthony Newley: Strawberry Fair Lenka: We Will Not Grow Old P J Proby: Somewhere Nanci Griffith: You Made This Love A Teardrop Eels: Losing Streak Cheryl Bentyne: Tea For Two Neil Diamond: Delirious Love Ellie Greenwich: River Deep, Mountain High Tony Christie: Louise Fun: Why Am I The One Gilbert O'Sullivan: Get Down
Blue has previously produced other microphones called the Snowball and the Yeti, so don’t try to read anything too much into the 'Raspberry' name. The difference between this and them is that this is designed to be portable.
For example; you want to record something using your laptop or your phone. Maybe a podcast, maybe yourself playing a musical instrument, maybe your mates in a band. Either you use the built-in microphone, which is generally okay but not outstanding, or you plug one in.
This is the plug-in solution. I’ve been sent one of these to play with and I’ve grown very fond of it. To start with, it looks like a serious piece of kit: it’s got a built-in desktop stand, something of a retro appearance and it actually feels good because a lot of it is constructed from metal.
The Raspberry plugs into the USB connection on a laptop, with a cable that's supplied. If you’re using an iPhone or an iPad, it also comes with an Apple Lightning cable that lets you plug straight in. If, like me, you have an Android phone, you’ll probably need a little USB OTG adaptor – mine cost me 99p off eBay.
What’s really clever is that the microphone also has a headphone socket, so – just like the professionals – you can plug headphones in and hear what you sound like when you’re recording. There’s a control on one side for headphone volume and one on the other side for microphone level. A little LED shines green when everything’s okay but goes yellow or red if the recording is too loud.
One of the other neat features is hidden inside: the Blue Raspberry has what the makers are calling an Internal Acoustic Diffuser. They reckon this resembles the way that recording studios and concert halls are treated, so your recording is all about the voice or the music and not about echoing rooms. There’s insulation built into the stand as well, to reduce the risk of vibrations messing up your recording.
If you like figures, it’s up to 24-bit 48KHz audio, which means it’s decent quality, and has a frequency response of between 20Hz and 20kHz. Depending on how you adjust it, the mic is about 130mm high when it's on a desk and weighs 272 grams. It’s all powered from your phone, tablet or computer – so no need for extra batteries – and works with a whole range of audio and video recording apps.
Expect UK pricing to be around £170 when it goes on sale next month, both on the Maplin website and on Amazon.co.uk.
Google has announced a new phone. In fact, as seems to be the way these days, they’ve announced two phones – both pretty much the same except for the screen size.
So we’ve got the Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL. These are especially notable because they’re Google’s own phones. Although we’ve had Google-branded phones before, those were made in partnership with other big brands like Samsung and LG.
The standard Pixel has a five-inch screen and the XL has a 5½-inch screen: both very high quality. And both have a 12 megapixel camera, which will produce decent photos and can also record high-definition 4K video. They also come with fast charging – this is becoming pretty standard for high-spec phones – which means you don’t need to wait for hours if you need to top up your battery, and there’s a fingerprint sensor for added security.
A big deal here is a built-in feature called Google Assistant. If you’ve been using an Android phone, you’ll be familiar with Google Now, which lets you ask spoken or typed questions. This takes things a step further; it’s more like a conversation. If you ask it what’s on at the cinema, it will give you an answer – but if you then say something like “what’s suitable for children?”, it doesn’t start all over again but instead tells you which local films are good for families. It can also read what’s on your display, so if you get a text message, you can say something like ‘remind me about this tomorrow’, and it will.
The Pixel phones should be in the shops from the end of next week. Pricing is from £599, although I imagine most people will be choosing some kind of subsidised contract deal.
Something else Google announced was a little loudspeaker called Google Home, which is voice-controlled and connected to the same intelligence as those phones – so you can ask questions, check your diary, play music, that sort of thing – and also control your house thermostat or your lighting if you’ve got the right kind of switches.
But that’s not yet got a UK release date. What does have a UK release is Amazon’s equivalent, called Echo.
This is something I first talked about a couple of years ago, when it was just available in the United States. It’s a voice-controlled loudspeaker that can answer questions, control other internet-connected devices, play music and help you with your Amazon shopping.
The Echo speaker will cost £149.99, there’s also a baby version called Echo Dot for £49.99. The main difference is that the full-size version has loudspeakers for playing music and better microphones for hearing you. The Dot is really designed to be connected to your stereo or a separate loudspeaker.
Both of them connect to a voice-controlled service called Alexa. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like Siri on an iPhone or Cortana on a Microsoft phone, you’re not far wrong.
So you’ll say something like “Alexa, play me some Bruce Springsteen” – and if there’s some Bruce Springsteen in your online music collection, it’ll do just that. Or you can ask it what the weather is, or to set an alarm, or what’s happening in the news, or how to cook comething, or to buy something from Amazon. And it’ll link to your smart phone – your online thermostat and light switches – if you’ve got that kind of thing.
The regular Echo is already on sale via Amazon UK, the Echo Dot goes on sale next week.
I’ve talked about drones before – remote-controlled aircraft with built-in cameras – but the technology has recently taken another step forward.
GoPro, a company best known for its tiny action cameras, has announced its own drone. It’s called the GoPro Karma – and it folds up for travel. This means it can fit in a backpack when you’re not using it; in fact, it comes with its own backpack just to prove the point. The drone itself weighs a fraction over a kilogram. So if you’re hiking or mountain biking, for example, you don’t need to hold on to the drone while you’re trekking cross-country.
When it’s time to fly, you get the drone out of your backpack, extend its folding arms and feet, then switch it on.
Folded, it’s 36cm long and 22cm wide – but unfolded it’s 41cm wide. Propeller length is 10 inches. The Karma drone has a maximum speed of 35mph and can be controlled up to 1000 metres away from you. Flight time is about 20 minutes until the batteries need recharging, which will take around an hour.
It comes with a controller that has a 5-inch touchscreen and an automatic routine for takeoff and landing if you need it. You can also set pre-programmed courses, so it’ll fly between two points or fly around the subject.
It can use a number of different cameras from the GoPro range; they fit into a special mount that keeps the pictures stable when you’re flying around. You can even take the self-adjusting mount [gimbal] off and use it in a hand-held grip for other stuff – say, shooting video when you’re running around. The basic price is $799 (UK pricing seems to be around £720), which doesn’t include a GoPro camera. If you want to buy one with a GoPro camera, the package will cost in the region of £1000 – that’s the drone, the controller, the stabilising mount, the grip, the camera and the backpack. Karma should be available by the end of the month.
The gadgets I chose this month for TRE Talk Radio Europe's The Daily all claim to be world exclusives in their way: New Apple iPhone SE
Yesterday evening Apple announced a new iPad and a new iPhone.
The new iPad is the 9.7-inch iPad Pro – which effectively brings the original size of iPad up to top spec. Six years ago it all started with the 9.7-inch iPad, then came the smaller iPad mini, then came the iPad Air, which was thinner, and then we had the iPad Pro, which was bigger and with better specifications. Now there’s a smarter version in the original size – better display, powerful processor, clip-on keyboard – yours for £499 in the UK (or €679 in Spain).
But it’s the iPhone SE that’s really caught my eye. Apple is calling this “the most powerful phone with a four-inch display” – and that’s the interesting part, because phone screens have generally been getting bigger and bigger. Last September, Apple launched the iPhone 6S with a 4.7-inch display, while the iPhone 6S Plus has a 5½-inch display. In its way, this new handset is turning the clock back to 2013, which is the last time Apple announced a phone this small.
In fact, you could describe it as an updated version of the iPhone 5S, which it’s pretty much replacing. But although it’s the smallest in Apple’s current range of phones, it’s more like an iPhone 6S under the cover. There’s a fingerprint scanner for security, the company’s new 12 megapixel camera, HD video recording and NFC technology for mobile payments – all inside an aluminium body. If you compare it with the iPhone 5S, which was launched around three years ago, you could easily argue it’s more than twice as powerful.
It’ll be available in the shops from 31st March, with the 16GB version costing £359 in the UK or €489 in Spain.
LM Cable
This is being described as “the world's first iOS and Android common connector”. In simple terms, it’s a cable that can connect either an iPhone or an Android phone to your computer – or can be used to charge either an iPhone or an Android phone.
It’s being offered via Kickstarter with prices from 25 Australian dollars including shipping (around £13). Bear in mind that Kickstarter isn't a conventional shop; there are more risks involved if you back a project.
In its way the cable is very simple. On one end is a conventional USB plug. On the other is a 2-in-1 connector that can work on microUSB and Apple Lightning devices. One side of the 2-in-1 connector is for Apple devices; the other for microUSB devices, like Android phones and tablets. It’s just a question of putting the plug into your phone the right way round.
It’s a very neat trick and means if you’re the kind of person who carries a charging cable with you, then you only need one cable... even if you have a mixture of Apple and Android devices. However, if you want to charge more than one device at once, you’ll still need two cables.
LM Cable, the business behind it, say it’ll support fast data transfer and 2.4-amp fast charging. It’s a metre long, it comes with a little loop that wraps round it to keep it tidy and it’s made with tin-plated copper wires, which means it should be tougher than some other cables.
The Kickstarter campaign has about a week to run. They were after 5000 Australian dollars before they went ahead; the last time I checked, they weren’t far off a quarter of a million dollars in pledges.
Twistear
These promise yet another exclusive: they are being called “the world's first tangle-free high performance headsets with a flexible dual self-winding system”.
If you use a hands-free headset on your mobile phone, the wires can often get tangled. Not just tangled with themselves but you can get them caught on your coat buttons, caught on your belt, caught on your bicycle handlebars, caught on a door handle as you walk past – and it’s the same problem whether you’re talking hands-free or listening to music. Worse still is when your phone rings and you try to plug your headset in but it’s turned into a nest of wires.
That’s where twistear.com enters the scene. They’ve put a retractable mechanism in the middle. Now, there are already other companies out there doing this kind of thing, but Twistear claims to be unique.
To start with, you can set the length of the cables of the Twistear headsets independently. What that means is you can pull or retract the plug part and the headphones part separately. That’s particularly useful because there’s a clip on the winder in the middle of the cable, so you can put it on your belt or your pocket.
The earphones are high-quality, which is important if you like your music, and they’ll clip together when they’re not being used. Plus there’s a microphone on the cable for hands-free calls. If you’re interested in the specifications, the frequency response for the earphones is between 20Hz and 20KHz.
Twistear has been in development for three years, they’re due to start shipping in August and they’re also currently being offered via Kickstarter. Pricing is from $24 including shipping (£17; €21). It’s not quite reached its funding goal but seems to be on course at the moment.
This week it’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which is THE big mobile phone trade show for Europe, if not the world. Samsung has announced two new flagship smartphones - the Galaxy S7 and the S7 edge, both of which have evolved from the previous models - while LG's new G5 smartphone is taking a new direction with its optional plug-in modules.
But the first device I chose to look at isn’t from one of those big names.
It’s from CAT, the company best known for making construction equipment – massive tractors and bulldozers, that kind of thing – although they’ve lent their name to mobile phones for the past few years. As you might expect, they produce phones that are tough enough to survive being dropped or caught in the rain.
You won't be surprised to hear there’s a camera built into the phone – we’ve had those for around 15 years – but alongside the conventional 13 megapixel camera is a thermal camera as well.
The camera part is from a company called FLIR, who specialise in this kind of thing. It means people will be able to use this smart phone for things like detecting heat loss around windows and doors, working out where insulation is failing, seeing if electrical equipment is getting too hot and – everyone’s favourite – seeing people or animals in complete darkness.
Heat can be detected from up to 100 feet away and displayed as contrasting colours on screen.
As expected, it’s also pretty tough: waterproof to depths of up to 5 metres for one hour – that pretty much makes it an underwater camera, if you want – and it can withstand being dropped onto concrete from up to 1.8 metres.
Other specifications include a 4.7-inch HD screen and 4G data connectivity. It runs Android and is expected to go on sale later this year for around £500 / €649 SIM-free.
My next gadget is a Bluetooth loudspeaker: technology I’ve talked about before. You can send music from your phone to a Bluetooth loudspeaker without using a wire – and because the loudspeaker is bigger than the one in your phone, the music sounds better.
Creative Labs, who produce the Sound Blaster range of products, have now taken this a step further.
They’ve produced the Creative Sound Blaster Roar Pro, which is the successor to their regular Sound Blaster Roar product.
It’s not a single Bluetooth speaker – it’s actually a loudspeaker system in a box, with five speaker drivers, including a subwoofer, a pair of high-frequency drivers and two speakers that fire sound out of the side. Inside is an amplifier for the low and mid-range sounds, another for higher frequencies. As you’d expect, you can adjust the tone as well.
It’ll fill a room with sound – whether that’s an office or a classroom. All this in a box that weighs just over a kilogram and is 8 inches long: the same sort of size as a big, black book. It runs off a rechargeable battery that’ll keep it going for up to ten hours and can even recharge your phone.
The clever part is the optional wireless microphone you can get, which turns this from a Bluetooth speaker into a public address system.
So – you buy your Creative iRoar Mic and instead of having to lug around a heavy amplifier, a microphone and miles of cable that someone will trip over, you just take this little box and your iRoar microphone. This can be held, hung round your neck or clipped to your jacket. It’s three inches long and just over an inch wide.
Despite being wireless, it’s very low latency – which means there’s not a long delay between you talking and the words coming out the speaker. And there are volume controls on the mic, so you don’t need to run back to the main box.
As well as all this, there’s a built-in microphone on the unit itself, so you can connect your phone by Bluetooth and turn it into a very loud speakerphone.
Sound Blaster Roar Pro is priced at £169.99 and the Creative iRoar Mic is £64.99 (around €300 total).
Back in the days before flat-screen televisions, producing a pocket-sized TV was a bit of a challenge. However, in 1966, a chap called Clive Sinclair managed to do exactly that. He went on to produce the world’s first pocket calculator in 1972 and then moved into home computers, with the ZX80 (pretty much the first computer that cost under £100), the ZX81 and then the ZX Spectrum, which became the UK's best-selling home computer of all time.
He then went on to produce the C5 electric vehicle, which didn’t do so well, and a range of bicycles too – but although he’s not stopped working, he’s not been in the headlines so much.
Last year, he produced the ZX Vega, which was a tiny games console combined with a controller that plugged into your TV, so you could play around a thousand games on this single device.
His latest product does what he’s very good at: taking his previous idea and making it better. This is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+, which is described as the world’s only hand-held LCD games console that can also connect to your TV - and has a thousand licensed games inside. So this one’s got an LCD screen and rechargeable batteries as well. You can use it when you’re out, you can use it around the house, and you can plug it into your TV.
The concept design is by Rick Dickinson, who designed all of Clive Sinclair’s ZX computers, while its hardware and operating system have been developed under the leadership of Chris Smith, who’s a former ZX Spectrum games developer and also wrote a technical manual for the Spectrum.
Not only does it have a thousand games built in, it can also run every Spectrum game that exists – that’s something like 14,000 of them. If you weren’t around in the 1980s, you might not appreciate quite how popular these little computers were: most people couldn’t justify the price of a proper computer but you could afford a Spectrum. Around 5 million of them were sold.
This is currently being offered on crowd-funding site Indiegogo for £100, with production and shipping due before the autumn this year.
Zoom is a Japanese company that I’ve known about for a number of years because they produce recording equipment: little multi-track recorders, the kind of thing that’s really useful if you’re in a band or you make podcasts, because some of the combinations of features you don’t really get anywhere else.
And then last month they announced this thing. It looks a bit like a fat Frisbee and is called the Zoom Arq – or, to name it correctly, the ZOOM ARQ Aero RhythmTrak.
It's a drum machine, a sequencer, a synthesizer, a looper and a MIDI controller.
Arq comes in two parts: there’s a base station with a wireless connection to what they call the ‘ring controller’.
In the base station are hundreds of drum and instrument sounds, and various ways to connect it either to a computer or to an amplifier. On the ring controller are pressure-sensitive pads for playing drum sounds or musical notes. You can also program or sequence these. It senses movement so, if you want, you can incorporate that in your performance, too.
In a nutshell, it’s a musical instrument that you can program, it’s also a drum machine… and because it’s wireless, you can even dance around the stage when you’re using it.
So, for example, you can create really complicated drum parts by programming it – or you can play it live. You can write music on it. You can play music on it. You can record sounds, change them and then play them back in a repeating pattern. And you can control other musical instruments. All this can be done in a recording studio, into a computer or live on stage.
Availability expected in stores May 2016; I'm expecting pricing to be around £425 (€550).
My 'gadget guru' conversation on TRE Talk Radio Europe this month included a few products that had been showcased at CES, the consumer electronics show held in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago:
As well as providing a good idea of the trends we’ll be seeing in technology, CES also offers an opportunity for manufacturers to grab the headlines with some particularly audacious products. One such company was Ehang, based in China, which has scaled-up the concept of a regular remote-control drone and has made one big enough to carry a person.
Ehang 184 passenger drone
These days, what most people describe as a drone is a remote-control aircraft between 30cm and a metre across, with three or four sets of battery-powered rotor blades that spin horizontally to keep the device in the air. They often have a camera attached and some can be controlled from your mobile phone or tablet.
The Ehang 184 follows a similar principle. It has an aluminium frame with four pairs of propellers, it runs from rechargeable batteries and can carry a person weighing up to 100kg (around 16 stone).
Flight time is around 20 minutes, with the batteries taking two hours to charge. It’s not meant to reach the heights of an aircraft – it’s designed to fly by to 500 metres off the ground, although it can go higher – and has a top speed of 63mph.
During the flight the pilot/passenger sits inside an air-conditioned cockpit that looks a bit like a helicopter. They program the route into a tablet, then tell it when they're ready to take off and when they want to land. After landing, the propellers can be folded upwards so the whole thing fits in a car parking space.
Pricing is expected to be something like £175,000 when it goes on sale this year, according to the company. Of course, the big question is where you’ll legally be allowed to use it – there are already plenty of regulations about smaller drones, never mind one that’s holding a person.
LG HOM-BOT Turbo+ vacuum cleaner
This was also on show at CES: it's being described as the industry's first robotic vacuum cleaner equipped with augmented reality technology.
We’ve had robot vacuum cleaners for a few years now. Generally speaking, they look like a fat Frisbee, they run off rechargeable batteries and drive themselves around your floor; avoiding furniture, going under the sofa and remembering where they’ve been.
LG has been making these for a while... and now they’ve added augmented reality technology (a feature called 'HomeJoy') to their new cleaner, which is the HOM-BOT Turbo+. This lets you use a special app on your phone to tell the vacuum cleaner about parts of the room that need extra cleaning. You take a photo of the room using the camera of your phone and then tap on the appropriate part of the image. When you’ve done that, your HOM-BOT Turbo+ heads over there and begins cleaning. You can also steer it there yourself, using your phone as the controls, depending on your preference.
Like some other robot vacuum cleaners, this LG machine has camera sensors that record the surrounding area to track where it has already cleaned. It also has a camera on the front that you can watch on your smartphone. One of the things you can do remotely is control the vacuum and clean your home from wherever you are – but, perhaps more importantly, you can also use it as a security camera. It can even send you photos when it detects movement in the house.
Availability and price haven’t been confirmed yet but I’d expect it to be upwards of £500 when it goes on sale.
Withings Thermo WiFi-connected thermometer
Withings makes a lot of health-related technology, from watches that monitor your running to bathroom scales that keep an eye on your weight.
They’ve now come up with the Withings Thermo, which they describe as a WiFi-connected temporal artery thermometer. It looks like a slightly flattened cylinder; nothing like a conventional thermometer.
Apparently the temporal artery at the side of head is a particularly good place to measure body temperature. The challenge is doing it accurately.
So the Withings Thermo has 16 infrared sensors to detect heat. When you hold it against your head and press the 'on' button, those sensors take 4,000 measurements in 2 seconds – and it also works out how it’s being affected by the ambient temperature in the room.
It then sends the temperature readings via WiFi or Bluetooth to your smartphone where they can be seen on a special application. This means it’s much easier to keep track of someone’s temperature if they’re ill: you can see if it’s going up or down every time you check, without needing to write it down each time.
There’s also a display on the device in either Celsius or Fahrenheit; it’ll glow green for normal temperature levels and either orange or red if the person's temperature is higher than it should be.
It runs off two AAA-size batteries and should go in sale in the new few weeks for around $99.95 (around £70).
SoundBrake
Away from CES, this is a project that’s on Kickstarter. It’s a tiny little device called SoundBrake – and it’s designed to alert you to outside sounds when you’re wearing headphones.
So, for example, you could be on a train, listening to music through your headphones and you might miss an important announcement. Or you’re wearing headphones in the office and someone calls to you but you don’t hear them. Or you’re at home wearing headphones and you don't notice a knock on the door.
That’s where SoundBrake does its job. It’s a little box that’s about an inch-and-a-half square, with a standard 3.5mm headphone plug on one side. In it is a microphone, some clever electronics and rechargeable battery that’ll last for up to 100 hours.
This tiny box works with almost any audio player to alert you to outside sounds. So you plug it into your music player, your phone or your computer, and then you plug your headphones into it.
You then set a volume alert level that’s higher than the current average background noise level. So if you’re in an office with air conditioning, you can make sure it’ll only respond to noises that are louder than the air conditioning. There’s a button to set the level automatically and there are a couple of buttons to fine-tune the level up or down.
When there’s a loud noise, SoundBrake temporarily turns off your audio to let you know that something’s up.
Pricing is $49 (£35); availability is due in April.
This is a curious thing. We're all used to Microsoft making the Windows operating system that's then installed on a computer made by someone else: perhaps a Dell laptop, a Sony laptop, an Acer laptop, a Lenovo laptop...
But then a few years ago Microsoft started producing its own tablet computer - a rival to the iPad, you might say. It's called the Microsoft Surface, it has an optional keyboard and it's attracted quite a following.
Now Microsoft has taken another unexpected step: it's producing its own laptop.
The Surface Book has a touch-sensitive screen - 13.5 inches across - and a proper keyboard as well. It runs on either an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and manages up to 12 hours of battery life. The screen has a hinge that'll let you adjust it to almost any angle and can even be removed if you want.
It's very much a competitor with Apple’s MacBook Air, their high-spec laptop, and it's priced accordingly. It goes on sale in the USA with pricing from $1499 [around £975 / €1300] for the 128GB version. There's no word of European availability but I imagine it'll be on its way before long.
This product promises to 'cast your favourite tunes from your phone straight to your speakers'.
It's a development of Google's video-based Chromecast, which plugs into your TV and lets you watch YouTube videos via your phone.
Chromecast Audio does the same kind of thing for music. It's a little disc-shaped device that connects to the mains and can plug into most Hi-Fi systems, powered loudspeakers and amplifiers. It comes with a 3.5mm connection although it'll also work with RCA connectors and optical inputs if you have the right lead.
And then you can listen to music from your phone. Not just your Android phone but your iPhone as well. And this isn't just music that you've downloaded to your phone: it's streaming services like Google Play Music, Deezer, Spotify and TuneIn.
The whole thing costs £30 and I'd very much like one in my Christmas stocking.
These are self-rolling dice. They are programmable and sound activated - so if you clap your hands, click your fingers or tap the table, they will start rolling.
The standard 'Boogie Dice' die can be used in any dice-based game, but the manufacturer has also designed a special card game to take advantage of all the programmable dice features.
The technology is fairly obvious when you think about it. Each Boogie Dice is about an inch across; inside is a microprocessor, a motor to make the die vibrate, a microphone to detect noise, a rechargeable battery and some LEDs to make the die light up. A full battery charge gives you about 30 minutes of non-stop rolling or 500 separate rolls.
To recharge, you put the die on a little charging pad, which takes around 40 minutes. And because they're programmable, you can change things like the rolling time and how long the die waits before it switches itself off.
These are available via Kickstarter; pricing is from $22 for one die with a charger (plus $10 shipping) [around £21 / €28] or from $45 if you want the Bots Battleground game, which is a bit like robot Top Trumps.
There's a fair amount of controversy around this laser razor. It was raising money on crowd-funding site Kickstarter, where it was aiming to get $160,000 and ended up attracting pledges of more than $4 million. But Kickstarter suspended the campaign because the company didn't have a decent prototype (and some people have used much stronger words about the company). However, that's not stopped Skarp Technologies from moving their campaign onto rival crowd-funding site Indiegogo, where the rules are slightly different - and where things appear to be running smoothly.
Smoothly is another key word here, because Skarp is powered by a tiny laser that claims to cut through hair without irritating or damaging your skin. So not only is it theoretically safer than a traditional blade, there's also hardly any of the waste involved. You may not even need water.
The company behind it hopes to have products available from March next year, pointing out that the people involved are experienced at working with cosmetic and medical products. Of course, that doesn't guarantee this one will be equally successful... but such is the nature of new products.
If you fancy taking a chance, pre-orders are currently $159 for a limited period, plus another $10 for shipping [around £110 / €150].
Barry Manilow being interviewed by Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in September 2009.
"My theory is that we all wind up doing what we were safest with when we were about thirteen to fifteen. I was comfortable making music and I felt safe then."
"Everything about this enterprise seemed crazy", wrote Rudolf Bing Working from his home in Vienna, he "managed to interest some excellent artists in the Glyndebourne project, largely, of course, because it involved working with Busch and Ebert". As the season approached, Rudolf Bing wanted to learn more about this curious English opera house. In May 1934 he decided to go on his own - "nobody said anything about paying my expenses" - leaving home in Vienna with his wife Nina, who stayed temporarily with her family in Paris while Rudolf took a ferry to Newhaven.
