72: The Sherlockian Tannenbaum

As you know, December 27 marks "the second day after Christmas," the day on which Dr. Watson called up on Mr. Sherlock Holmes to wish him "the compliments of the season"in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle."We've long celebrated that particular story on this date with a poem of our own - even opting for reading it on an unnumbered special episode in 2007. But rather than simply rehash the tried and true, we thought we'd mix things up a bit this year and bring in a guest.Peter Blau, 2s., BSI ("Black Peter") has been with us previously (on Episode 6 and Episode 7), so we'll spare the full introduction. We asked Peter on as our very special guest in order to tell the story behind his very unusual Sherlockian decoration: a Sherlock Holmes-themed set of ornaments - each inspired by one of the original 60 stories. He regales us with the challenges involved in trying to identify these ornaments without a copy of the Canon handy.Peter also tells us about his paper written some 40 years ago in which he describes the true story behind how a cropless animal such as a goose could have a carbuncle hidden in its crop.TL;DR: it comes down to a typo - an 'o' substituted for an 'a.'We close this episode with an audio Gas-Lamp: inspiration taken from our interview with Bert Coules (Episode 68 and Episode 69): a clip from the BBC Radio version of "The Blue Carbuncle" that hits at the core of the relationship between Holmes and Watson.