Scenes from childhood

“Please stop the car.”

Reluctantly, my father pulled over to the side of the road which was relatively narrow and surrounded by hedgerows.  We were on holiday in Devon, staying in a dowager’s cottage on an extensive estate.  The single-storied cottage was built of bright red brick, and was doubtless Georgian, although at the time I was unaware of the fact.  I was about 13.

I had asked for the car to be stopped so that I could record something off its radio.  At this age I had started to discover music, and listened avidly.  I had a very simple Philips tape recorder which worked both with batteries and a mains adaptor.  I had rigged up a lead ending in two crocodile clips which I used to connect the recorder to the car’s speaker placed in the back panel under the rear windscreen.

The car was a Ford Zephyr, I think, but my memories are hazy on this point – as on so many others relating to my childhood.  My father ran a chain of garages, so our cars seemed to change every year, and my childhood is punctuated by a steady and confusing succession of upgraded models.

I spent many hours in the car that holiday.  I was hungry for music, and Radio 3 – probably only recently transformed from the Third Programme – provided me with an apparently inexhaustible supply of it which I was loath to miss.  It would be poetically appropriate if the car in which I was so often transported to magic realms by the sounds I heard had indeed been a Zephyr, sent for me by the gods.

So it is mostly music that I remember from that trip – apart from an incident in which some wellingtons were lost in a possibly dangerous swampy patch.  I recall vividly sitting in the car with a Mozart duo for violin and viola for company, and thinking it boring and uninspired; I hope it was partly the performance.  I also remember being alone in the spacious cottage – the rest of my family had gone out somewhere, leaving me to my anti-social bent – alone, that is, apart from a caress-seeking but supercilious black cat.

I listened to a recording I had made of Mozart’s “Haffner” symphony; unlike the string duo, I thought this the most electric music I had ever heard.  To improve the limited sound quality of my tape machine I place a copy of The Radio Times over the small built-in speaker; this cut down the annoying background hiss and the casing’s tinny buzz.  I played the tape again and again; I can still hear the magisterial opening, with its great soaring octaves and gradual rhythmic acceleration, as it filled the echoing room.

The other piece I listened to during that holiday was Schumann’s “Kinderszenen”.  Even now, when I hear the music it conjures up those timeless moments as we sat in the car by the side of the road, listening stilly as the tape recorder whirred softly in the background.

(21.10.89)

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The longest day

I woke shortly after midnight.  “Good morning”, I said to the nurse who immediately disabused me of the notion.  I knew that going to sleep again was out of the question; it was a matter of filling the hours before the television started up again.

I listened to Capital Radio.  Its hourly news bulletins mapped out the night for me.  In between I was aware of music, and the kind of conversations which can only be had at three o’clock in the morning.  It was a strange timeless time that felt like it could have gone on forever.  That it had gone on forever.

But finally 6.30 came round.  Time for TV-AM.  As I began to watch it I realised that there are worse things than endless nights.  Partly this was because it was so bad; one presenter in particular looked as if she had practised being awful – it is hard to believe that anyone could attain such depths unaided.  The BBC’s effort was better.  Frank Bough, for all his insufferability was at least professional.  But gradually even Auntie’s efforts began to pall.

It was after I had seen the Shuttle disintegrate for the fifth time on the news bulletins that seemed to come every ten minutes or so that I realised what was wrong.  By its very nature, aimed at people who have just enough time to stuff some toast in their mouth before they dash for the 7.43 from Orpington, breakfast television is on about the same level as the tabloids.  There is the same short attention span implicit in every item and in the overall structure.  To watch breakfast television, all of it, is a profoundly dispiriting experience.

Such studied trivialisation proved to be the key note of the day’s viewing.  Whatever TV touched it turned to tinsel.  Ironically, one of the best programmes of the day was during the dead patch of schools television.  A look at Phoenix, Arizona, was short and to the point, and managed to capture some of the otherness of the place.

Children’s programmes mostly looked the dumping ground for TV no-hopers they are rumoured to be.  The only show with a modicum of wit behind it was a rather wacky TTV feature a raggle-taggle tomcat, broad scots moggie-ette and a very alternative TV show within a TV show.

The less said about Top of the Pops the better.  Except perhaps to note that the youth of today must be a pretty moderate lot to put up with that sort of nonsense being foisted on them as “theirs”.  Have none of these prancing dummies heard of miming for God’s sake?  Neither the producer nor presenters seemed to have any shame in offering a rambling and incoherent wander through a few naff videos and naffer “acts”.  Finally, in what should have been the grand finale, there was Boyd’s Good and Bad at Games. This turned out to be a nasty but totally predictable tale of public school stereotypes.  Possibly the best of a bad bunch, but that’s not saying a lot.  And so to bed and serene sleep, confident that tomorrow had to be better than the last 24 hours.  If necessary I would listen to Capital Radio throughout the day as well as the night.

(6.2.86)

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