IT DIDN'T sound all that much fun being at The Point. The audience at Faith of Our Fathers (RTE 1 Saturday) listened in reverential silence and nobody clapped and no one joined in. Much better, therefore, to sit at home with the radio, glass of red wine to hand and sing along with the best of them - which has got to be the monks from Glenstal. Soften your finals, our music, nun at The Bower used to beseech us, so I did, giving Salve Regina everything I'd got. A convent education comes in handy on occasions like that.
Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to find a convent - or indeed a nun. They're either not joining or, if they do, they're out as soon as they've gone in. In the series A Change of Habit (RTE 1, Thursdays) we hear why, from Bernadette Flanagan, a 38 year old theology teacher and member of the Presentation Order. Since she joined, 20 years ago, 40 of her religious sisters have left. There aren't enough challenges in Ireland, she thinks. Those who work abroad are more likely to remain nuns. In Pakistan, for instance, there's a lot of work to be done with women, only half of one per cent of whom can read, she says. She took up theology after discovering that women in the Bible are usually portrayed as prostitutes or temptresses. She makes an interesting observation about the correlation between violence against women and divine gender. Our God is always portrayed as male, but "in those cultures where the god is female," she says, "there is less rape." Fifteen minutes of good talking from a woman who's in the driving seat.
General Jacques Klein is in a seat of a different sort - a hot seat. He is, we learn from In the Kingdom of Klein (BBC Radio 4 Thursday) the UN transitional administrator in eastern Slavonia, in the former Yugoslavia, and his job is to oversee the peaceful transfer of power there from Serb to Croat. The capital is Vukovar, which fell to the Serbs on November 18, 1991. The Serb mayor of Vukovar now has to answer to the Croats, a bitter pill for the one time victor to have to swallow, something which Klein - a diplomat in uniform whose music preferences include Bach and the blues - well recognises. He deals with the Serbs, using a clever mix of bullishness and sympathy. When they say they want to "celebrate" the fall of Vukovar he tells them, plain and simple, it's just not on. "What's there to celebrate? The goddam town's in ruins. You do this you're going to kiss goodbye to $1 million." The Serbs listen and, instead, hold a quiet wreath laying ceremony, attended by Klein, while a brass band plays an unspeakably sad, Slavic dirge. Not far away, in a muddy field, a group of Croats mourn the death of 200 of their people massacred there, when Vukovar fell.
Night Flight (BBC Radio 4 Classic Serial Sunday) - a poetic evocation of early flight - started life as a novel by Antoine de Saint Exupery who, in 1926 and aged 26, climbed into a bi plane to become one of the pioneers of airmail deliveries - flying initially across the Sahara and the Andes. It seemed apt, therefore, that this story of an airmail night delivery from Patagonia to Buenos Aires should go out over the airwaves. Flying held both fear and fascination for Saint Exupery. As the tiny plane, buffeted by winds, heads into the dark edge of a cyclone the crew felt as if they were "dropping into the heart of the night." Nowadays, we take the miracle of flight for granted. This production recreated the terror and the mystery.
"The best years of my life are gone but I wouldn't want them back, not with the fire in me now," says Krapp to his tape. Patrick Magee - whose scratchy, intimate voice inspired Beckett to create the part of Krapp especially for him recorded The Third Policeman (BBC Radio 4 The Late Book Weekdays) towards the end of his life. Producer Maurice Leitch's 10 part series (continuing until Friday) makes compelling eavesdropping and is a reminder that the best radio requires the simple trinity of a writer, a voice - and a listener.
