From Dad’s diary, 31 January 1960 We now have our first television set. It cost the tremendous sum of £5 and is a second-hand Bush with a twelve inch screen. Our neighbour Mr Clitheroe, who has a radio shop, supplied it and I expect the aerial to cost as much as the set.
The thing works very well, apart from a high pitched whistle which I’m told not everyone hears – being above their audible frequencies – and which is inherent in all television sets. This last assertion of Mr Clitheroe’s I rather doubt.
Second hand sets are so cheap because in our Never-Had-It-So-Good society the latest and biggest television set is a status symbol. Also, our set does not receive the commercial programmes – and was rejected by its’ last owner on that account…
The model Dad bought was a TV24, introduced by Bush in 1953 before ITV had even been dreamed of. So it only had the one (BBC) channel in blurry low-res black and white – to see what was “on telly” you just turned it on and waited for it to warm up.
During the day they broadcast the test card (above) to help installation engineers adjust aerials and picture settings. Actual programmes only started in the afternoons – while at the end of the evening everything stopped and the screen just went dead with a whistle to remind you to turn off the set.
This photo is by Mike Bennett and comes, with grateful acknowledgement, from his TV museum website at oldtechnology.net
Between the ages of 10 and 14 I sang in the choir of our local church, where the regime was High Anglican with incense and Candlemass, King James bible and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Despite, or perhaps because of, my vociferously atheist dad I took the classes and got confirmed into the church, and started taking regular Communion.
One reason all the Anglo-Catholic razamatazz resonated so deeply for me was that, even before my teens, I was riddled with guilt. Having been physically attracted by other boys for as long as I could remember – certainly from age six – I might not have understood the full implications of those feelings. But I was certain the secret fantasies that had me writhing nightly in bed were deeply shameful.
The first time I attended communion and heard the 1662 General Confession it hit home like an Exocet. The remembrance of my misdoings certainly was grievous unto me, and the burden of them was indeed intolerable. Faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ seemed to offer some sort of way out. At least until night time, when of course my misdoings recurred all over again. [More]
in the 1950s Mum and Dad took the News Chronicle as our daily paper, which included a column for kids written by Big Chief I-Spy. For a while my big brother was a keen member of the I-Spy tribe, with its secret codes, badges and signals.
It was a well thought out proposition: you could just buy the books, direct from the News Chronicle in Bouverie Street, and have the satisfaction of filling them out as you spotted each item. But you could get additional status, a badge and an I-Spy kit by actually joining the club. See Wikipedia article.
The titles of the series on the backs of the books (click image above to zoom) give a fascinating glimpse into the lives and concerns of kids in the fities, and the places they would be most likely to visit and things they would be most likely to do. Number one: the seaside – followed by a farm visit, history, a train journey, dogs, countryside, at the zoo, in the street, on the road, London, horses and ponies… The Army came in at No. 17, People In Uniform at 29.
There’s a nice online collection of I-Spy memorabilia available from Paul & Karen Rennie, whose website and shop specialise in British art & design of the 20th Century.
Brilliant BMX kids filming each others’ stunts - found by randomly browsing for videos from Saffron Walden on YouTube. Full props to the featured riders Pete Beer, Jamie Stamp, Ollie Sandles, Toby Martin and Alex Stot but this looks vid looks particularly good because of Ollie’s sharp editing.
Noticed the footage was uploaded in 2008 and idly wondered whether Mr Sandles was still riding and filming three years on. Sure enough he has a portfolio of 37 clips on Vimeo - the latest of which is posted below.
We may shake our heads in despair at sodcasting, cyberbullying and cheerful flouting of copyright among today’s digital natives. But the physical prowess of Ollie and his BMX friends - and their effortless ability to capture, digitise and display it online - deploys levels of acrobatic skill and visual creativity that my own generation (growing up in that same North East corner of Essex) never dreamed of. Fair play to em…
Pool Session from Ollie Sandles on Vimeo.
Sometimes travelling in distance can be a bit like travelling in time. Found myself revisiting the scene of some of my earliest childhood memories this weekend… For a full set of pix see the slideshow on Flickr
In the early fifties Huntingdon was still a small county town, chartered by King John in 1205 and with Oliver Cromwell among its former MPs. It was the small, sleepy hub of a small, sleepy county – there were so few people with telephones that my grandmother’s number was Huntingdon 351. The whole population was something like five or six thousand and this 1951 snapshot shows The Causeway completely empty of cars.
My great uncle was rector of St Mary’s parish church there and lived in the imposing red brick vicarage from 1938-1970, while Dad, Mum and us two boys settled in nearby Godmanchester, just a mile up the River Ouse. Every Sunday my atheist father required his two sons to attend morning service at St Mary’s. Perhaps out of family loyalty or perhaps – as he claimed – because he wanted us to know what we were rejecting if we opted to follow in his godless footsteps.
In the seventies – long after Uncle Alexander had retired and the rest of the family died or moved away – Huntingdon got swallowed by the neighbouring country of Cambridgeshire. Visiting it today the population has more than quadrupled. A vast concrete flyover has been driven across the nearby watermeadows while the ringroad brutally gouged through the town centre is like a badly-healed razor scar across the face of an old friend.
So Huntingdon may be much bigger but it’s also much diminished compared to the county town of which my grandma was the first woman mayor in 800 years. Back in 1954, that was quite a big deal. Today, wandering past the closed arcades and charmless redevelopments along its high street, it’s hard to imagine anyone nowadays giving a toss one way or the other.
That said, even if it was possible, I wouldn’t go back and live amid the quaint rural racism, sexism and homophobia of 1950s Huntingdon, not for a million quid in old money. The good old days are definitely here and now.
Great anecdote from Cousin Rich: “I went to see a farmer last week with his wife and two kids. They needed to Talk about Father’s will – in his eighties and proper poorly. Son had been working the farm for forty years, daughter working as a teacher. We chewed the fat for a couple of hours and brought things out into the open.
At the end of it all I said: ” Just keep talking this way. It’s not about tax, it’s not about farming. It’s just about what you all think is fair. You need to do it now Mr C. or otherwise it’ll be too late.” At which point Ma C said: ” That’s exactly what your grandad said around the table to my family in 1958. Just the same. That’s lovely, is that. You’re just the same as your Grandad, getting us talking like we should.” I thought I’d done well.
The daughter walked me to the door, shook my hand and said to me: ” Thank you very much for coming. You’re hilarious. You needn’t think you’re going to get paid for telling us the fucking obvious.”
My cousin works in his family’s law firm and is a fund of sharply observed local stories. Keep wishing he’d write a book – or at the very least start blog of his own.
Opened my eyes around 06:50 a sunny May morning, wife’s turn to make the tea downstairs. Idly flicking through Tweetdeck on my iPod, found that the Not For Resale blog had posted ten minutes of dawn chorus recorded in Patcham Village at 04:15 the same morning. A tweet to wake up to…
![Patcham Village](="http://cockerel.net/assets/patcham.jpg)
