Fun with Cabin Pressure

[eanor]

So, I don't know whether it's the same in English, but in German we use "Timbuktu" as a synonym for "far away place". Thus, it occasionally comes up in a conversation. Well, yesterday I was discussing where to have lunch with some of my colleagues and since we couldn't decide, the suggestions got more and more abstruse until somehow said "We could

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[bratty_jedi]

Timbuktu definitely has a connotation of a far away, perhaps not even real, place in English. I think that's why at the beginning of the episode Mr Birling isn't positive if it is a made up place for people to say they're going to when mad or if it is real.

In the global history class for which I'm TAing, the professor did a lecture last week on Timbuktu as a center on Islamic scholarship and book printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. She ended discussing the 2012 seizing of the city by rebels, the destruction of many of the preserved manuscripts by the rebels, and general information about the ongoing civil war. I kept thinking "That's why MJN couldn't take Mr Birling there!" and almost giggling. I felt kind of bad about being able to only think of it that way when it is serious, but even so as soon as class was over I grabbed my office mate who is also TAing the class and who I've introduced to Cabin Pressure and told her about that episode since she hasn't heard it yet but has heard both other Birling Day episodes.