Sorry if the picture above looks a bit photo-booth. I took it. This month’s TSTL came together with more than the usual level of improvisation (a couple of late withdrawals forced a couple of late subs) but it came together nonetheless. We were delighted to be able to welcome our first ever overseas turn when Mary Gauthier, the great American songwriter, came along to tell the personal story behind her new record “The Foundling”. In Britain finding your birth mother involves an agreed procedure and the careful supervision of a social worker. In New Orleans all you need is five hundred dollars to pay a private detective. It’s an astonishing story. Mary came after broadcaster-writer Gianluca Tramontana who wasn’t the first TSTL turn to recall the floodlit moments around the death of a close family member but certainly the first one to describe the palliative part played on this occasion by marijuana. Susan Marling of Just Radio began the evening with the tale of how she went to New Zealand determined to describe its tranquility and instead found herself in the most hazardous environment on earth. Claire Macdonald described one of those bizarre and touching brief encounters that can only be thrown up by the random nature of the public transport system. Finally Arnold Brown, who could justifiably be preceded with the adjective “legendary”, talked about the night he became a comedian with just the one joke. The evening was MC’d by Kerry Shale. Here’s his new website. (I particularly recommend the clip from “Sorry”.)