You know you are becoming a crusty old bore, akin to the
type of colonial relics that inhabit a Somerset Maugham short story, when you
start talking about ‘When I first went overseas …………. “
In the heady days of the early 90s there was no internet or
email so you wrote and received letters in the form of blue areogrammes that
you folded up and sent off – it was a red letter day when a blue letter arrived
and I used to skip up the steps to the various rented flats clutching one when
they came.
Phone calls to overseas countries were accompanied with a
timer and hissing of in-drawn breath – my parents-in-law only rang us a couple
of times during our years overseas as it was regarded as prohibitively
expensive.
And if you wanted to listen to the BBC Radio 4 long running
serial, The Archers you had to get your parents to make a recording and send it
out to you.
I wasn’t actually such an Archers fan that these desperate
measures were required but when we lived in Hong Kong in the early 90’s, I had
a great friend, Laura, whose mother used to tape the omnibus edition every
Sunday and then send said tape to Laura.
When I tell this story to anyone under the age of 30, I can see their
eyes roll in complete incomprehension, whilst they mentally pause and wonder
whether to ask for a translation.
I love having the internet, and email, but I also love my box
of tattered areogrammes, mainly from my mother who wrote the most superb
letters, but slightly irritating never dated them beyond the month. I now realise I should have written the
year on them when I received them as it is now a deduction process from the
contents, and the address on the front, in terms of working out when it was actually
written.
One of the things I love most about life now is that I can
conjure up BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3 at the touch of a button on my computer,
either live or as a podcast. As I
write now I have Essential Classics from Radio 3 playing in the background as I
am someone who always needs noise around to work. Most early evenings I will cook to the wake up call of the
BBC Radio 4 flagship ‘Today’ programme which sets the tone for news and views
each morning in the UK, and when ironing I will find a podcast from Woman’s
Hour or The Life Scientific – both of which are the most fantastic programmes
and I very rarely come away without having heard something that really
interested me. Desert Island
Discs is a weekly treat and when I find one I love, I am on a one-woman mission
to spread the word and all my friends find the link posted to their
inboxes.
‘The Archers’ is typically British institution, a radio soap
opera that has been going since 1951, originally, and perhaps still, billed as
the ‘everyday story of country folk’, I can remember listening to the after
lunch slot in my primary school uniform and the theme tune is instantly
recognisable to any Brit of my age.
There is still a distinct rural flavour to it, and we are
definitely talking village life, complete with established families, wealthy
farmers, poor but honest (most of the time) tenant farmers and labourers,
village shop, now run by worthy volunteers and a village green. But no one could accuse The Archers of
not being of their time – over the past couple of years the storylines have
included a gay civil marriage, infidelity, donor insemination and the vicar
marrying a Hindu and my personal favourite, one character, Emma, managing to
marry not one, but two brothers in quick succession. I have to come clean and admit I am now totally addicted and
will listen to the 12 minutes slot whilst I cook most evenings.
In recent weeks the tension in The Archers community has
ratcheted up as a domestic abuse storyline took over. The build up was very dramatic and I was reduced to getting
up and listening to the next episode whilst I ate my breakfast, furiously
hushing any of my family who dared to interrupt the storyline. When things came to a head – or to
knifepoint – it was I think the story that stopped the nation. The Today Programme had to utter a
spoiler alert before they discussed the episode as one of their leading news
stories of the day.
For anyone feeling nostalgic, here’s the theme tune, you
only need the first few bars to be transported.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKVGFP93bPg
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