Loremen Podcast - S4 Ep55: Loremen S4Ep55 - The Snail Telegraph (feat. Susie's Dying)

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Alasdair bundles James into a red telephone box and dials S for snail. There are ghosts in the wire. There are signals from the other side. The Wichita lineman is still on the LIIIIINE. The year 1850 saw the bizarre tale of the "snail telegraph" play out in Paris: an eccentric inventor, a gullible journalist and forty-eight alphabetic-sympathetic snails. Magical molluscs? Or simply the work of a French fruitcake? You decide. Alasdair shares the story, plus what might be the creepiest post script in the history of the pod: Lancashire's own "Susie's Dying" legend. LoreBoys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And James, you like to use your telephone, don't you? Boy, do I. You're a modern young gentleman. Yeah, as long as it's not for speaking to people on... You like to use it for playing games.

Yeah. And maybe texting. But what if I told you that a phone could be ghosts? What? That's right. Is it included in my regular bill? Or do I have to pay extra? No, it's extra, like roaming.

Ah, well, I suppose that's for the best. I have for you, James, a very, very spooky and extremely strange tale that spans the entire globe. Ooh. Here is the story of the snail telegraph. You what?

Mm. Yeah, it lives up to his name, I promise. Ho there, James. Oh, ho. Ho there. Ahoy. Ahoy there. Ahoy there.

Ahoy, ahoy there. Ahoy there. Ahoy hoy. I'm contacting you, as you know, using the international Wibbly Wibbly web system. Yes, yes, the dub dub dub. Yeah, trip dubs. Triple dubs. And that's, it's a miracle really, isn't it? It's incredible to think that somebody who lives in London could

speak to someone from Oxfordshire. At any point. At any moment. What a world. Yeah, over a wireless medium over vibes yeah i don't know if it's purely vibes so there are some cables involved i think yeah yeah yeah it goes from my face to the router and then it goes to you through wires and then into your ears yeah that's your catchphrase isn't it as well from my face to the router through wires into your ears yes that's my catchphrase, isn't it, as well? From my face to the router, through wires into your ears. Yes.

That's my catchphrase. It's a good one. Those wires, of course, are what I want to talk to you about today. There's spooks in them wires. Don't you think there's something spooky about telegraph poles? Wait, right. I don't know that I'm 100% certain what they are. They're poles.

Standard things up in the air that have wires on them. That's a telegraph pole, yeah. Right. I mean, nobody is sending telegrams these days. They're not really telegraph poles. That's just what we call them in this country. In America, I think they're called telephone poles. Those crazy cats just calling them what they actually are,

phones carrying telephone wires. But we call them telegraph poles because it's old-timey. They're quite fun to notice, though. Yeah, it's not just a really bare tree oh no they're one of them things that you don't really see but then sometimes you really see them it's like yeah oh everyone's house has got a wire that links it to that pole yeah for me i think it's that in this country we often have overcast skies and there's something about them, you know, black against the sky. They're a weird intrusion into the landscape. Yes.

I feel like I'm not taking you with me on this telegraph poles are spooky thing. But they are. Ask the 1970s. Oh, okay, then. I'll just, what, I'll text them? Will I send them an email? It's like 1997 on a rotary phone. No, that's 1997.

Yeah, wait a minute. It's the height of Britpop. You've got to check out this OK computer. This is something new. Well, in the future, computers are a bit more than OK. Is that your warning to you from the past that computers will get better? Yeah, yes. Moore's Law, next year, it's going to be a quite good computer so ever since the invention of the telegraph people have regarded it as uh spooked up and that's a direct quote from me in this podcast around the time that they were being

developed um people were generally of the opinion that someone was going to invent a machine for speaking to the spirit world thomas edison said he said i am going to invent a machine for talking to the spirit world that's again not a direct quote but i'm paraphrasing that was his vibe yeah he said i'm going to make a machine for talking the spirit world and then just got really quiet about it and never did it um they were like hey tom are you finished that machine for talking to the spirit world? He's like, ah, die. I'm going into a tunnel. Can I just electrocute another elephant? You enjoyed that, didn't you? I think maybe he did invent it,

and it was just elephants getting in touch saying, what the flip? Why didn't you kill me? Can I get a point of electricity? What? That's confusing. Was an elephant the only thing you could think of killing? Elephants getting in touch, they go...

That would be his ringtone, I think. Sorry, I've got to take this. Oh, it's the other side. There was a newspaper in both Britain and America called The Spiritual Telegraph. Two separate publications, both of them dead-born. They're really, really dull, the Spiritual Telegraph stories. It's basically like a church newsletter full of sort of, you know,

pious Christian stuff that doesn't really appeal to me and sub-Derek Okora quality miracles. Ooh, that's very loud. Where someone comes through from the other side and makes a sceptic look rather foolish. Oosh. So I trawled through the spiritual telegraph hoping to find something spooky, but I couldn't.

And then, of course, I fell back on friend of the podcast, Sabine Baring-Gould. Yes, SBG. Yeah. And you'll remember from a previous episode that he wrote a book called Yorkshire Oddities. Yes, yes, I did. But he also wrote a book about oddities.

Oh. Correctly dividing the world into two categories, Yorkshire and not Yorkshire. And I think you'll find everything does fall. I don't want to be binary about this, but everything is one or the other. Yep. I think that is one of the few things that you can just be really,

like, absolutely definite. It either is or isn't Yorkshire. It is or it isn't Yorkshire. That's how it is. T, it either is or isn't Yorkshire. It is or it isn't Yorkshire. That's how it is. T, it either is or isn't Yorkshire. Yep. Puddings. They are or they aren't Yorkshire.

Yes. So he wrote Historic Oddities and Strange Events, 1899. And one of the oddities he records was the snail telegraph. The snail telegraph? Yeah yeah no spoilers about how it works but i think you might be able to guess one of the key elements in it is there a slug email well it may be james maybe i'm not a scientist uh but i'll tell you what who was jacques toussaint ben. I'll give you some background. The story begins.

It's 1850. 10 to 7. It is the mid-19th century. And the first undersea telegraph cable ever, as far as I know, was laid between Dover and Calais. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Classic.

On a booze cruise. You could just ring up for a booze cruise, check they've got some booze in. Finally, you could just be like, friends, are you there? And they'd say, oui. And you'd be like, okay, lads. Get the van. Yep.

Get the horse and van. I'm being a bit cheeky because this is a Parisian story and normally we do British local legends, but I think that cable connecting Dover to Calais is what justifies it. Absolutely. And of course, Dover, England, most of England, Paris, they're all not Yorkshire.

So let's not split hairs. And a bit of France is quite Brittany. Mmm... Yeah. C'est une blague. Where? That's a joke, I think I said. Did you say that's a blague? Blague. Blague is a joke, isn't it? Is it?

I think so. Oh oh that makes more sense do you think you've been conned by loads of french comedians yes i did look at some point the listeners are going to realize we can't speak french oh not this episode though no no no mon ami they're going to realize we're bl blacking it. Yeah. Oh, these French puns. If just saying things that Poirot has also said isn't enough to get us through, we're going to be in trouble. So, it's October 27th, 1850. Jules Alix, a French journalist for La Presse, which I assume is a newspaper and not like a cafetiere, was raving. He was raving, James, about a technological breakthrough that would make the electrical telegraph look like...

Look like total rubbish. Please swear in French. Do it right. Will you put a French bleep over it if you do? Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

Bleep. I'll give you an alternative. Jules Alix, he was raving, James, about a technological breakthrough that would make the electrical telegraph look like total rubbish. Ooh la la. Oh, just a quick sidebar.

I have looked up what rubbish is in French. Oh? And I don't think we can say that. What's rubbish in French? This shit. That's way worse. That's way worse. That sounds way worse. Yeah.

But we, you and me, live in the future now. Yes. With the wibbly-wibbly webs and mobile phones and baseball caps that you wear backwards and that sort of thing. So we, of course, will be familiar. This new breakthrough is going to seem commonplace to us. Yeah. And it is called

the Galvanoterrestrial Magnetic Animal and Adamic Force. Oh, my gosh. And exclamation mark, writer's own. I haven't added that. It is written in italics with an exclamation mark. You see, James, undersea telegraph cables were brand new and they were fraught with problems because the corrosive power of the sea and all the finding nemo is getting down there nibbling away at it and the shark tail is getting in there and the little mermaids it was a problem so what alex was

describing was something completely different something that was going to blow it literally the little mermaids. Mm-hmm. It was a problem. So what Alix was describing was something completely different, something that was going to blow it, literally blow it out of the water. Not literally, but it is literally in water. Yes. So here's what happened. I mentioned it before.

An inventor, Jacques-Touton Benoit, J.T. Benoit, approached a successful gym owner, Monsieur Triat, Monsieur Triat. His name is the first part of triathlon, so presumably that's how he ran a gym. Oh, that sort of gym. Okay. Not just a James. He didn't own a James.

He wasn't in charge of a James. A successful James. A gymnasium. Something like that. He ran a gymnasium in Paris. Benoit approached him asking for help with an incredible invention that would supersede electrical telegraphy. And the other guy said, well, you know me, I'm a gym owner,

so of course I'm interested. And Benoit said all he needed was two or three pieces of wood. Right, what? In total? In total, that's what he said he needed was two or three pieces of wood. Right, what? In total? In total, that's what he said he needed. How big? They tell it to be a lot larger and more numerous than anticipated. Is it to go to England?

It's not a bridge. It's not un pont. It's not a bridge. It's the word for bridge, I think. Or pond, not sure. No, sur le pont d'Avignonignon couldn't have a pond of avignon anyway we do speak french wait now you like me james we when we think of people who run gyms we probably think of intellectuals you know masters of critical thinking well i'm thinking about a guy in a, weirdly, in a vest and a woolen hat.

Yeah. Pick a temperature that you're going to dress for. If you're hot enough to be stripped down to a vest, take off your woolly hat, mate. Pop that cigar out. So, yeah, we probably think of guys who run gyms as the last people who would fall for any kind of scam or weird belief system.

But actually, Monsieur Trier is the smartest guy in the story. So take that, James. I will. But not that smart. He takes Benoit to his workshop and offers him the use of his carpenter. You know, the gym's carpenter. Yeah. And he's a nice guy.

He's like, sure, you've got a great idea for an invention. You only need three bits of wood. I'll give you three bits of wood and a carpenter to help you put them together. Go for it. Cut to one year later. Ruiya has now been housing Benoit in a third-floor apartment for a year. Ah.

And Benoit has constructed two enormous wooden scaffolds in one room. Mm, sounds like more than three pieces of wood. That is exactly what Sabine Baring-Gould said. He was straight in there. Ah, good. SBG says, This machine, for the construction of which he had asked for two or three pieces of wood, was

an enormous scaffold, formed of beams ten feet long. This was the Pasililinic Sympathetic Compass. Mm-hmm. It occupied one end of the apartment. at the other end was a second exactly similar each contained 24 alphabetic sympathetic snails sympathetic snails alphabetic sympathetic snails okay yeah so it's pretty obvious by now what's going on i think um i'll

give you a bit more information the journalist okay alix wrote how many snails are in there 24 in each one so that's 48 in total but there's 26 letters in the alphabet i'm assuming in french there isn't i thought there was more or that they just didn't bother with some of them because the french let's be honest don't say half the letters so just drop a few i thought there was more because don't they have a funny S? You're not going to put that on a big snail compass thing, are you? I'll explain what it looks like. Well, to the best of my ability, because the description is very confusing.

Alex wrote, This apparatus consists of a square box in which is a voltaic pile. Now, a voltaic pile, I think think is what you and i would call a battery right and it would normally be made up of disks of different kinds of metal stacked on top of each other uh but this they've been arrayed differently here around a central axis and there are metal disks and fixed to those disks are cloth lined bowls or basins made of zinc and riveted with copper. And in each one of those basins, James, there's a little snail. Right.

In every one. Right. Are they alive? For now. Oh. Well, they're definitely, definitely alive. Obviously, how would a snail-based telecommunications device, which, yep, that's what this is,

how would it work if they were dead? That would be ridiculous. Yeah, no, I apologise. I retract my question. Thank you. Let that be stricken from the record. It's a stenographer going... It's just having a word with some snails.

Yeah. Guys, don't need to undo this. So Alex goes on to say, and this is a long, long passage. I'm going to say it in a French accent. Obviously,

it's been translated to English, I guess, by Sabine Baring-Gould because speaking French is the kind of thing people could do in those days, very much like James and I, intellectuals,

gym owners. Oui. C'est le sport. Very good. This is long, but I think it should answer all your questions about what this machine was and how it worked. C'est le dispo. apparatus disposed, as has been described, and containing in it snails in sympathy with those in the other apparatus, so that the eschargotic vibration may pass from one precise point in one of the piles to a precise point in the other and complementary pile. While

these dispositions have been grasped, the rest follows as a matter of course. Messieurs Benoit and Bia have fixed letters to the wheels corresponding the one with the other, and that each sympathetic touch on one, the other touched consequently it is easy by this means naturally and instantaneously to communicate ideas at vast distances by the indication of the letters touched by the snails the apparatus described is in shape like a mariner's compass and to distinguish it from that it is termed the pasilla-Linic sympathetic compass, as descriptive at once of its effects and the means of operation. So, that passage introduced a second character by the name of Biat, or Biat-Cretien, which was his name. And he was Benoit's co-inventor, but he wasn't in Paris at all.

He was in America. What? Yeah, he had a copy of the Pasillolenex Sympathetic Compass. Here's how it works. Have you ever put two snails together to make them kiss? No. Have you? No.

I think they do it themselves, because I think that's how they kiss themselves, I think. Really? Yeah, like when you make your Barbies and your Cindys kiss, or when you put two mobile phones on top of each other. Yes, to kiss, yes. They're kissing, that's them kissing. Yes. I think that's how, I mean, snails have got to do it somehow.

It's not going to be the shells, is it? That's true. The action spot is underneath. Anyway, the action spot. That's just basic science. Oh, I have looked up the French alphabet. Where? There used to be 25 letters.

The W was added in the mid-19th century. Okay, so the W might have been coming in round about now in the story. Yeah, well... Without which we couldn't have had the internet. And maybe before that, because it was a double W, because it was two Vs, they thought of it, maybe it was tiring out the uh the v snail the v snail that snail was getting a bit tired and probably the k wasn't there either

that makes sense you don't need the k so once you've squidged two snails together yeah and they are separated from then on they are joined by a psychic thread or trail that's the basis of the invention now it's not one that passes through the air and apparently they proved that with balloons good no more information about that i can only assume they took two snails up in balloons and asked the snails if they were in contact. And the snails were like, nope, not getting anything. Oh, it's hot air balloons. I'm guessing hot air balloons. Oh, I thought they popped a party balloon. And saw if the other snail looked surprised.

Yeah, that could work. It could be that. I simply don't know how they tested it. The way it works is the current passes through the earth. So as long as the two snails are in contact with the earth in some way that's what they do isn't it they really hug the ground they do don't they and they live the silvery trails through which messages can be sent so so you get your a snail you squidge two together you separate them now you've got two forever connected snails you pop one in a little

dish marked a you pop the other one in a dish marked A in America or perhaps on the other side of your apartment in Paris because he did both. And then when you squidge one, the other one goes, I'm being squished. Oh, I better tell my mate who I kissed that time. Yeah, you know who I want to know about this? Alain, the French name for Alan.

The other A. So Alix, the journalist for Le Presse and the gym owner, after a year of working on it, came to see a demonstration and they passed a few words back and forth between the two machines in the apartment, which came through with mistakes. And they only did about three words, and each word, there are about three mistakes

in the sending of three words. So that's actually quite poor. Mm. But the snails might not have spoken French. We don't know. But that's small fry, sending a message from one side of a room to the other. Arguably, you don't need

a Pasillinic sympathetic compass for that. No, no. The challenge was sending a message to America. Yes. America, land of a big compass full of snails. Yeah, land of some snails now. So, Benoit, you can imagine how nervous he must be, you know, rubbing the back of his neck, sweat running down his face, has to make contact with Beatle Chrétien over in America, over to SBG. Benoit was then desired to place himself in communication with his American friend, planted before his compass on the other side of the Atlantic.

He transmitted to him the signal to be on the alert. Then he touched with a live snail. So that's the other thing. It's like when you have to use your nose to open your phone when you're wearing gloves to operate it you seem to have to have a snail to hand as well as the whole thing but you know it's still it's very convenient what's one more yeah you probably want to keep a few spares frankly yeah yeah he touched with the live snail he held in his hand the four snails that corresponded to the letters of the name Biat. B-I-A-T. Then they awaited the reply from America.

After a few moments, the poor glued snails. Sorry, I forgot to mention that the snails are glued in place. Oh. Which is horrible. I mean, it doesn't sound like they were having a great time in the first place, but I guess it's just the French looked at the invention of the telegraph and were like but could a snail suffer is that way of making it cruel to animals please after a few moments the poor glued snails began to poke out their horns in a desultory irregular manner and by putting the letters together with some accommodation sabian was made out sir bien'est bien. That's good.

So he sent the message to Biat and Biat replied, ça bien. Which seems like quite a low-key response to the miraculous, instantaneous communication. Via psychic snail. Via psychic snail's

palis... I don't even know how to say it. I don't know what it means. Unsurprisingly, Jules Alix, the journalist, was utterly convinced

blown away and brushes off to to write up his account on a slug the the gym owner was like get out of my house this is fake you've just this is this is unimpressive for a year's work so he he was like no it's real so basically they agreed to a challenge they would move the compasses to different parts of the gym so that benoit couldn't see the other one from the same room while they were sending a message to the to the second one right which seems reasonable yes or more importantly without the snails being able to see each other. So there's no possibility of cheating on the part of human or... No snail shenanigans. None. None.

Snanaligans. Wait a minute, this one's just a slug underneath a very small croissant. So, according to SBG again, Benoit accepted all the conditions with apparent alacrity, but before the day arrived for the experiment, after the removal of the two great scaffolds to the gymnasiums, he had disappeared.

What a surprise. He didn't go through with it in the end. He was, however, seen afterwards several times in Paris, very thin, with eager, restless eyes, apparently partly deranged. He died in 185252 that's written with an exclamation mark so he died only only two you know only one or two years after this happened so

i don't know was he a con artist james was he uh was he deluded was he just a bunch of snails was he a lot of a lot of snails pretending to be a French man? Yeah, it could happen. It's a sad and tragic story and they say if you hold a snail to your ear you can still hear him saying c'est bien

his catchphrase. Did no one in America get any snails? Did any snails get to America? As far as we know and this is based on sabine barringold's investigation beat cretien did not exist at all and there's no there's no record of anybody by that name in america no mention of an inventor called beat cretien so as far as we know there

was nobody on the american end of of the uh snail telegraph but does that mean that benoit didn't believe that there was someone there i don't know it seems like a it seems like a a very long long time to invest in a scam that can't possibly make you any money if you know it's fake yeah also a little bit of snail logistics of snail kissing logistics yeah so these are all in throuples these snails presumably well yes which is going to be awkward yeah long distance throuple surely that is a recipe for disaster it's not gonna work it's not gonna work come on well it didn't work even if you're a psychic snail It's not going to work. It's not going to work. Come on. Well, it didn't work.

Even if you're a psychic snail. Yeah. That's probably why they were sending back messages like, Serbian being really sort of offish. Yeah, fine. A bit distant. Full stop. No emojis. So, now this being a Telegram based episode james i could i could stop now or would you like

a little spooky post script uh yes please something a little bit more close to home even though we actually live nearer to paris than to the location this story is set uh we might not we might not i haven't tested that i would like to tell you about an extremely eerie telecommunications phenomenon localized entirely within the burnley area oh now when i first read this i thought it was barnsley and i was like yeah because that is yorkshire but it's actually burnley which is in l Lancashire which is not Yorkshire decided there was a whole war it's not Yorkshire

and this story comes from It Happened To Me Volume 1 which is a collection of letters to the Fortean Times Thank you to Lawfolk Regular Tea Cake 2000 and the Ghost Machine blog for helping me track this one down to its source

This is The Susie's Dying Legend. Oh. And it's based on a correspondence. It's all kicked off by someone named Rob in the year 2000 who writes into Fortean Times and says, I'm going to try and do a Lancashire accent. I don't know if it's going to be a Lancashire. I don't know if it's going to be Burnley.

Are you available to do a Lancashire accent? You want to do a Lancashire accent? I guess you'll... You're talking at one, to us each. I don't think the voice needed here... This is from a guy in 2000 who probably works as a web designer. Your voice is more sort of a mill owner who's bitten his tongue.

Yeah, he's been punched in the throat. He's been punched in about the face and mouth. Possibly by someone from Yorkshire, just over the border. Oh, girl, it's me, Fonzie. Yeah, what are you doing? Oh, yeah, yeah. Really? Ow!

So here's Rob's story. Do correct me if the accent goes off at any point. Don't worry. Back around 1975, when I was nine, some of the kids I knocked around with insisted we all pile into the nearest phone box to hear a spooky message. Ooh.

By dialing a number, I think made up of zeros, ones and twos, and without needing to insert tuppence, a woman... It actually says two pence. I've made that more colloquial. Nice. A woman speaking in a curiously monotone voice could be heard saying, Help me. Help me. Susie's dying. That's help me, help me, Susie's dying. That's help me, help me, Susie's dying. That is quite chilly. Over and over. It's quite chilly. Some of the lads said she sometimes said, help me, help me, Susie's drowning. Was it some weird engineer's

test? Hence no money needed, asks Rob. Now this kicks off an explosion of correspondence. Christopher replies, saying, I can remember once cramming into a phone box in the Stoneyholm area of Burnley with various other kids to hear the strange message related by Rob. I cannot remember the number dialed. Could this be an early example of EVP, brackets, electronic voice phenomenon, close brackets, Thanks, Chris. AG, just initials this time, leaps into the fray three years later. I remember the spooky message when I was a kid playing with the old red phone boxes

in Burnley. Two phone boxes in particular were prone to mysterious, scary voice messages. One at the top of Dalton Street on Plaintree Estate and the other on the end of Harold Street on Stoops Estate. As I remember, you put 2P into the slot, wildly contradicting rob's statement from earlier and pressed 2020 2020 and the voice on the other end would be crackly but audible help me suzy's dying which would send us kids running in all directions finally let's it let's hear from presumably a woman, Tracy. Okay, let's get this sorted. 2003, Tracy writes, I am from Burnley and have a vivid memory of the said phone messages. In either 1980 or 1981, three other girls and myself were loitering with the intent

not to go back to school after lunch. Pretty dangerous. Tracy, Tracy, Tracy. pretty dangerous tracy tracy tracy we were messing around in a phone box near to school calling random numbers and talking rubbish if anyone answered well we thought it was funny one of the girls said she knew a number you could call to hear a spooky message i think there were threes and twos in it. When she called this number, we all heard the message as quoted in previous correspondence. I have no doubts as to the phrasing of what I heard. It was a clear voice with no audible distortion. Needless to say, we were all a bit freaked out by this.

And when a British telecom van pulled up nearby, we made a hasty retreat and returned to school. A happy ending there for the educational system. Yes. They got scared straight. I do like the idea of the BT sort of men in blacks turning up to be like, are you listening to spooky things on the phone, you teens? Did you find 2020202? Don't tell them, Reg!

And that story came, the final account came from Tracy, who now lives, as of 2003, in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. Pew, pew, pew! Yorkshire. That is Yorkshire. That is Yorkshire. He's brought it full circle, covering all bases. So that's the legend of Susie's dying.

Susie's dying. Which is supposed to be monotone. I might be acting it a bit too much. Yeah. I might be putting too much into it I might just be like Help me, help me Susie's dying

That's actually creepier, isn't it? Help me, help me Susie's dying Yeah How many twos was it? You don't dial it now on your rotary telephone According to AG It was 20, 20, 20, 20

So four twos in total 20 Are you dialalling it? Just a sec. James is a sinister monotone woman. Am I talking to her now? No. She's gone. She's gone. I hung up.

I got scared. That's really scary. Who was that? Yes or no? No. She's gone. She's gone. I hung up. I got scared. I got scared. That's really scary. How did it... Who was that? That was the 202 lady. It's good to know Susie's rallied. It's good to know she's got a part-time job. She's working at O2 now.

Yeah. Oh. Well, that was terrifying. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely chilling. I didn't expect an actual voice to come through on the telephone lines. A monotone female voice? A monotone female voice.

Wow. James, are you too chilled or are you able to pass judgment on my sales? Yeah, but I mean, yes, I am ready. Yeah? Do you think anything's ever going to be the same again? No. No. No, I don't, frankly.

I'll move on to the scores then. Okay. First category, names. Names. SBG. Yeah, he's always good value. A load of French. A load of French names.

Alix. Beat Cretin. Beat Cretin. Is that a little bit of a dig at the gymnasium guy? Is that his blag to beat the cretin? Maybe un blag, I don't know. Un blag? I don't know if it's feminine. Un humble blag.

We've got the Parcellulinic Sympathetic Compass. Yeah, that's amazing. The name of which describes its function and use. Yes. In one go. You don't need any more information. No. The voltaic pile.

The galvanoterrestrial magnetic animal and Adamic force. The what? The galvanoterrestrial magnetic animal. Those are all hyphenated. And Adamic force. Well, yeah, you've got that. You've got snails. And snails.

So it's going to have to be high because that name of that thing, although I can't remember any of the words of it, is delightful to hear. The GTMAAF. The GTMAAF. Good to math. Just sympathetic snails as an idea. But it conjures up a beautiful image. It does, doesn't it?

They're in love, James. They are also glued to a machine. And you can also tell them about your problems. You can. They'll be like, I said, yeah. Yeah, so it's a four. A four. A four.

Very good. Thank you. Next category, supernatural. Whoa. Well. They know each other, James. They know each other. They know each other james they know each other the snails know each other explain that i don't know i don't know how could a snail meet yeah i mean even just the idea of a long distance thruple i think is yes it's supernatural pure fantasy pure fantasy

and then you busted out suzy's... Susie's dying, yeah. Susie's dying. Squeezing a little bit of Lancashire creeps. Oh, that was very creepy. So... I think it was so creepy, I genuinely got shivers on my spine. Did you?

Shivers on my spine. I think that's probably partly my acting. Oh, yeah. Oh, all the snails I got down there. Oh, that's weird, because when you shivered, the snails on my back shivered. Oh. Yeah.

Oh, the back snails. Something tells me, oh, the back snails is not going to become one of our long-running catchphrases. That's a tragedy. You never know. Oh, the back snails. Oh, the back snails. It's a five. five a five for supernatural even though the machine did not work a hundred percent didn't work suzy's dying is yeah

that's creepy that's s that gets me yeah gets me very scared great good stuff would have been frightening wouldn't it my next next category, not Yorkshire. You've got to agree, most of the story took place in not Yorkshire. I was being a bit cheeky because we don't normally do foreign stories, but really the snail telegraph stretches across the entire world, so it belongs to all of us. Yeah, the things we do here echo in snail eternity. Is that the film Snail Gladiator? Yes, Is that the film Snail Gladiator?

Yes, that from the film Snail Gladiator. Starring Russell Crowe, the snail. It's ironic because crows are probably quite natural enemies of snails. They'd love to eat a snail, wouldn't they, a crow? Oh, they'd love to. Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. And that snail's partner would be like, No!

No. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm being eaten by a bird at the same time in America. Yeah. Okay. Not Yorkshire. Not Yorkshire. A lot of it was not Yorkshire,

but there was one little bit that was in Yorkshire at the very end. A small amount of Yorkshire. So it's a four. It's a sous-sant of Yorkshire. Final category? Mm-hmm. Snail mail. Mm-hmm. Mm.

It is, though, isn't it? Do people still say snail mail? They do if they've been a little bit sassy. I don't think people write letters anymore. Do they? Not unless it's like, oh oh it's usually bad news oh yeah i'd be terrified if i got a letter now i've learned a thing or two about snails though i've got i've got i've popped the wikipedia snail page up there's the snail

limnea which makes decisions by using only two types of neurons. One, deciding whether the snail is hungry, and the other, deciding whether there is food in the vicinity. So it's like an and gate. You need both of those. Yeah. One or the other is not enough. The Yorkshire and more Yorkshire. Rather than Yorkshire, no Yorkshire.

If Yorkshire and pudding, then eat. Then Yorkshire pudding. Mm. Mm. So, what am I judging? Category for snail mail. It's taken a while to get here, but it is. I'm rubbing my hands together with anticipation.

I'm standing by the letterbox. There's four snails vibrating in the in the scaffold and it's an F, I, a V and an E oh yeah I'm in there for a second I've got four and it's nine so good would you get snails on a data plan?

I think yes. Yeah, you could get snails on data. Per month. But are they like a rolling snail? Yeah, people are like, it takes me a run out of snails. As I mentioned, James, the Susie's Dying Legend was introduced to me

by someone on the Law Folk Discord. Oh, yeah? What if the listener wanted to hop into the Discord themselves, James? Well, it's as simple as either getting 24 snails. Okay, okay. I'm way ahead of you. Or go to patreon.com forward slash lawmenpod and just signing up and joining in I just keep a drawer with a couple of old snails in there just in case yeah and a few old chargers

but you might have to return the snails because like if you read the to return the snails. Because if you read the small print, those snails don't actually belong to you.