Radio Pasts into Present

One was reminded this week of the past with a few more things emerging from Mum's room and oddly enough the Womens World Cup in football, a game she was an avid fan and uniquely for the period even played with her brother, now deceased, and the boys he was best friends with.

Back then if you wanted to find out what was on the radio or television you bought a weekly listings magazine you looked up the day and all then then broadcast stations.

Many had very vivid colour front covers and it's fair to say I can recall all of these and more and although today people use on screen guides, internet listings and the like you can still get the Radio Times just with less unique regional editions.

Mum did like the radio, especially local radio and when I was younger I did listen a lot to it at home and in the dorm so again you'd look up the listings for shows at this time of year the details of the evenings Proms concerts on Radio Three of the works performed that night.

Strangly enough I did like shows like Sing Something Simple, Charlie Chesters Soapbox and Richard Baker's 100 Best Tunes apart from much of output of Radio Three for classical and Radio One for current pop music

Apart from having a big mains only stereo with a record player, I did have a variety of portable radios cos the beauty of Radio was you could take it anywhere and be drawn into the programming and in the main they were fairly traditional sets.

Recently I did buy a new one but actually its pedigree is almost as old as me for being based on a nineteen seventies  set by Roberts called the Rambler which was a a relatively short wooden sided portable with a carrying handle designed to give a similar quality as their bigger sets but easier to pack with you.

Very dorm friendly I might add.

The current one keeps much of the looks from the outside but its internal gubbins are very modern which means from the outside a traditional tuning scale that had a pointer that moved showing what you were listing to no longer exists.

Instead with have a display that shows the station name.

When off it shows the time - and the display can be dimmed - and on VHF/FM while tuning the frequency.

It has just VHF/FM where most national and local stations are to be found and VHF band III Digital Audio Broadcasting (aka Dab) where many national stations that aren't on VHF/FM such as BBC Radio Six are.

You can have up to ten presets per waveband.

It has a single speaker but the headphone output is stereo as is the Aux input and Blue Tooth and while there is a version with two speakers I felt the extra 2.3 cms in length wasn't at typical distances going to give much stereo effect given how close each speaker was.

It runs of C cells or mains via a detachable mains unit.

There's just something simple and transporting back into the past of just pressing that on/off button and listening to its full sound.

Replacements for Autumn

 It's rather a warm start to the day, quite a bit better in some respects from when I was away and this week I'm looking more towards Autumn and assessing the stuff I got as clothes obviously do wear over time and so you do need to replace things from time to time.

According to my notes the last pair of trainers I bought was in the Autumn of 2011, as we were coming out of Covid and not long after going away for the first time since lockdown to The Lakes as my older pair had become somewhat worn in that period not being helped by my walking gait being affected by having a week left side, wearing one side rather more than the other especially around the heels.

My current pair are starting to show signs of that wear although they've done a lot better than much of my footwear past and present on that score and so I got a pair of Adidas Juniors Tensaur Sport 2.0 CF K Hook & Loop School Shoes in black as they look hard wearing and fasten with velcro.

Winter for me always brings challenges with gripping in the season of ice and snow before the twist and turns of our pavements that making walking hard going are taken into account fo starting the season with a brand new pair of trainers with excelent grip is a must.

Given the odd pair of these traditional argyle patterned socks have lost one  of a pair in the wash over the years I bought a pack of three as being made from wool, they do keep your legs and feet very warm in winter whatever the length of your short trousers.

That was the week that was

 

Well okay it is Friday today so just what is going on here as the forum members may of noticed I was away for a short while last week and as this was typed I'd only just come back?

The first thing is of course sorting out the washing as being active you certainly get through rather a lot which if it didn't aquire a grass stain or two, might of picked up things from what we were making apart obviously from needing freshing up which as good as stuff like Lynx deodorent  is at keeping damp spots from forming, you still add a bit of a smell after a day to your t shirts and what nots.

Then there is dealing with any post that may of come which with me included two cds one being a recent speciality issue of a Bill Wither's album and one's Commando, Beano and Phoenix comics as I have subscriptions to them.

There should be coming on Thursday some lp record inner sleeves as I had noticed as getting getting through a number to the point restocking made sense and given I could get 24 delivery I got that done late Wednesday as there's no sense in ordering anything big if you aren't going to be home.

Normal service will be resumed on the blogs next week but that's where we're this week.

A day trip

 

We were away on a day trip this week to Llandudno, Wales for the first time in a good while following the disruption of the Pandemic in 2020 where with different parts of the UK under different regimes habits were disrupted.

We were a bit late in arriving thanks to odd route decision and the first habit change was in getting a meal where the usual haunt of Tribells was given a miss as reports suggested the quality had dropped off so we went to a cafe/restaurant on Mostyn Street near the former M&S shop for cod, chips and Mushy peas.

Given how long I had gone without food it really was a must and it did not disappoint  being in thin non greasy batter with plenty of superior pure fish rather than the reconsituted sort served quite warm with a huge pot of tea.

Several shops were visited such the Gift Centre, Boots and the cat rescue shop although like a number towns in the UK there had been changes such as M&S moving to Mostyn Champneys retail park which I used to like to visit for the school wear section and HMV closing its store due to issues between it and the landlord over rent.

I did get to see the promenade  and pier with the gift shop no longer with us but with the boat trip excursions around the coatsline still running, busy as ever.

We took a better route back thank goodness in the light rain of the late afternoon.

Fixed!

Although the weather has been pretty abysmal here with heavy rain, hailstones and very early more like spring cool temperatures of late limiting opportunities to be out I am making progress on one aim over the last year or so.

A running issue in this house has been how when the gas central heating was put in that has created issues when it comes to where furniture can be put in in some rooms even the piping has created issues because they run warm even with the floorboards over them.

This over a period created some issues with my record collection with a small number developing quite noticible warps where the storage units crossed over piping set below not always helped by the storage area failing to keep discs upright at 90 degress.

Having sorted storage out more that left these discs and so I've been replacing the most affected, more difficult to play for the warp catching the underside of the cartridge or causing the arm to move up and down a lot.

We've almost completed that task this week where the replacement copy - by no means cheap at all of The SMiLE Sessions - which for good measure an individual also left a tear in the rear sleeve having had an accident I wasn't told of arrived on Wednesday and was stored well clear of any hazards.

I can now relax a bit having dealt with that damage.

Sparky and his Magic Piano

The idea of the musical story isn't new and in the late 1940's and early 50's we had  Sparky a young boy and tales from his world full with effects and imagination.

This week the entire series has been reissued on compact disc in high quality for the very first time for "boys" of a certain "bone age" to enjoy again from the gramophone age.

The cover illustration keeps a fair bit of the period 50's Capitol feel when the 78 was giving way to the 45 and 33 rpm album.

Naturally they are all in mono sounding as good as possible.

This and series like the Junior Choice volumes British EMI issued in the 90's are the sort of recordings that take me back to those less complicated times.

Train service thoughts

Having been away throughts do come a bit to transport as for many a decade the notion of getting further in less time has interested railway commentators and the people who dream of and design railway systems such as the ill-fated Inter-City 125 High Speed Train of the late 70's and early 80's, a idea that was obselete before the first engine was fully assembled.

Britain as a country is a mainly urban and inter-urban one with only Scotland having significant highly seperate rural communities, followed by Central Wales and then patches such as the Lake District in Westmoreland.

As a West Midlander, my region is highly urbanized from here in North Staffordshire, The Black Country, Birmingham of course and Coventry-Nuneaton so local stops are really quite important to getting about and dealing with the road traffic congestion we see every day.

The Marches are different with smaller villages between towns but in the main they are on a few lines that run from major centres such as Telford, Wolverhampton and Brum plus Crewe into the nearby bigger towns of Wales so again local stops matter, this time as part of the connectivity across Shropshire, Hereford and Worcestershire.

For us a high speed limited stop system doesn't really offer much and if anything issues around capacity on the lines cause problems especially when trains are delayed which is what happened while away recently.

Increasing that capacity by using the space that exists to reinstate an extra pair of tracks would achieve more for us than the much talked about, ever increasingly way over budget  and delayed HS2 system with dedicated trains going over very limited stops and track from London to Manchester in the North.

That would improve punctuality and enable small improvements on the premium pair of lines when it comes to speed that matter more on cross-country services while allowing services valued for local connections to run without some of the conflicts operationally speaking we presently have.