Radio Days

I love Radio not just as a medium but as a device to have in the house; and one of my most prized possessions is the radio pictured above, a (by modern standards) ancient Sony 2010 shortwave radio. It has sat on my bedside table since before the first Gulf war. It's my companion at night, often the provider of the last and first voice I hear at the end and beginning of each day.

It's tuned by default to BBC Radio 4, but frequently gets picked up and pointed at all manner of other radio stations. It can hear the fleet of aircraft flying overhead; a galaxy of radio stations from across the planet on shortwave; it can switch to a sideband setting and hear strange covert radio stations reading ciphers, number by number to (presumably) agents across the continents. The radio is a madly powerful thing to have to hand, if patience is in supply and curiosity is your thing.

I bought it before the first Gulf War to listen to the Middle East as it reported itself; I heard the Voice of Iran refer to Israel simply as 'the Zionist Entity' then tuned across to hear that country's Kol Radio refer to the Iraqi scud attacks ranging in on its territory.

The internet of course has changed everything, and now that I've got an internet radio the old Sony has had to move up a bit. The web version of the radio can receive easily and cleanly all those stations I used to really struggle to get. It's less romantic but so much more practical.

I was really upset this morning when my Sony refused to respond when I turned it on. I had a good fiddle with it, checked its power supply but it wasn't having any. Disconsolate I took it down to the hall for recycling, wondering if I could ever find another because Sony have long since stopped making them. Then on an impulse I plugged it back in and gave it a sharp rap on the speaker panel. Bingo! I'm (hopefully) back in business with it for another few years.

In the Shadow of The Bomb

One of the weird things about being alive in 2008 is that people don't seem to fear the Bomb anymore. When I was a teenager in Cheadle I sued to have nightmares about it, and just to make sure you had the right amount of fatalism there were films like 'Threads' which made you feel that you absolutely didn't want to survive if the bomb ever did get dropped. I nearly joined CND, but then worried I'd be blacklisted by the BBC, so I decided to be an anxious bystander.

But people seem to be cool about fission devices now. I can't remember the last time I discussed nuclear weapons with anyone. Folk seem to have forgotten they exist. They're just not brought up in polite society.

But exist they do, and can I have been alone in being transfixed by an adaptation on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday night of Nevil Shute's novel 'On the Beach'. In Shute's story the world has engaged in a nuclear conflagration and everyone is dead - except the Aussies, who people presumably forgot to press the button on. But the levels of radiation are rising and even in Brisbane people are going to die within a matter of months. Then, from Seattle, a radio signal is heard and a US Navy submarine sets out on a desperate mission. I listened to it on the way home , then sat there in the street as it finished. It's here for seven days, but then the recording reaches it's own half life and dies away.