Lashings of fresh media

I am grateful to Alice at A Growing Delight for a recent mention, in her blog, of the availability of BBC digital radio via the 'net.  It had only became possible for me to benefit at about that time, as we had just gained access to ADSL after a long and patient wait.

So today, here I've been, for the past hour, tuned to the BBC Classical station beaming instantaneously, and clear as a bell, from the other side of the world.  And it is one of dozens of programmes, both live and archived, to choose from.   

I am reminded of all the years in the 60s and 70s when I lived in the backblocks of Papua New Guinea.  There was no TV of course, so we depended on powerful short-wave radios, 6 or 8 'D' batteries, cleverly strung antennas and lots of dial-twiddling to pick up whatever we could from the airwaves.  Never was the reception half so clear as that I am enjoying now.  Frustratingly, much of what we picked up was in the language of one of our near Asian neighbours.  The music was mostly so scratchy that it was scarcely worth wasting the batteries.  The alternative was to play endlessly from our personal selections of vinyl LP records (all of which I have kept, out of nostalgia) but again at the cost of draining the life from those expensive batteries.

In those days there were no newspapers either, unless you wanted to pay to have them airmailed and then arrive in stale batches a couple of times a week.  Our grocery orders were usually shipped or flown in weekly.  Apart from the pleasure of fresh supplies, one of the side benefits was a source of new reading material - the thick wads of newspaper the individual items were wrapped in for transit.  Sometimes we scored the horse-racing results from Flemington, or the Sydney stock-exchange quotes, but each page was carefully smoothed out and checked for items of interest before discarding.  Not that it was often discarded; in the early days a single sheet had exchange value at the local vegetable markets as cigarette paper.  The local villagers and migrant workers all used it for wrapping the home-grown tobacco for their typical tailor-made 6-inch long smokes.

Ah, the good old days - in some ways.  But sometimes it felt as though we were living on the moon.  Right now I am listening to the BBC news.  Live.  The same broadcast that thousands all around the world are hearing.  Only the moon still feels far away now.

Comments

[Tjilpi]

"Right now I am listening to the BBC news. Live."

Any chance of finding somebody who is dead who is listening to it?

As one of my Irish customers said today:

Well, Band Aider, we live till we die, and then we find out what happens next.

[Tabor]

Thanks for stopping by my blog. It certainly tis exotic to get visits from one of my most favorite places. I will have to write a 'life story' on my visit there sometime. I used to get packages from my family wrapped in the hometown newspaper. I would do the same thing, to see if I could catch up on what was happening in my little farming hometown.

[Sonia]

Hi Jude! I resolve this problem doing that: I sign my prefer newspaper "O Estado de S.Paulo" and 2 times a week I go to the village near my house and pick up my newspaper, or my daughter and my son come Sunday to lunch and bring them to us. Have a nice weekend!

[Alice]

Jude, so glad you are enjoying Classic FM as much as I am. I've been advised by a blogger in the UK that it is not in fact a BBC station but a Commercial one, hence the ads. But who cares - the ads. are often humorous and the music is wonderful, although I'm blowed if I can ever get a request played. I sent in 5 requests in one week without any luck, and now that we are on daylight saving down here, it's too late for me to stay up and listen to Lunchtime Requests every night.

[Anna]

If you like really excellent speech radio - features, comedy and drama check out BBC Radio 4 - I'm permanently tuned in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/