On
New Year’s day 1961, I saw my meagre savings gratefully topped up
by my grandmother. That meant that on the second of January I could
go radio hunting in Bruges clutching a 500 franc note (just over £4
at the time), being the sum of my worldly possessions. My quest for a
new, inexpensive and cheap to run portable radio of the transistor
persuasion was soon met with success. I returned home with a small
hand-held radio, an ear-to-ear smile and 5 francs to spare.
The
new transistor radio fulfilled all my expectations. It was small,
loud, clear and cost hardly anything to run. Apart from that, it
managed to capture far away stations that had failed to register on
the Tesla. An added bonus, which I only discovered after I got home,
was the fact that the set even had ‘Shortwave’!
Whilst
studying in my room I also started listening to ‘English by Radio’
from the BBC. Every day I tuned in to programmes for beginners and
intermediate learners. The lessons were broadcast on 648 (where now Caroline lurks :) and 1296
kHz, the loudest channels on the Medium Wave at the time. I sent off
£ 2.5 to an address in Brussels and subsequently obtained a year’s
subscription to a weekly magazine, which included the texts of the
dictation exercises that had been broadcast the previous week. That
was a great help for a budding learner of English. After many
spelling trials and tribulations I got quite good at it. In fact I
had turned learning English into a hobby. Thanks to the BBC my
knowledge of the language increased in leaps and bounds. I didn’t
have the faintest idea then, that at some time in the future I would
become a stringer for one of the BBC stations. I’m sure that would
never have happened if it had not been for that small transistor
radio.
More of AJ's radio- and other anecdotes.
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