I have been getting a lot use use from my iPod Touch these past few months. Now with a new docking station and 100 watt speakers the sound has never been better. It's a far cry from the late 50s when the sound source in our living room was the brown bakelite Bush radio, with its fabric flex and 15 amp round-pin plug. I saw one in a London pub recently, sitting high on a shelf, dusty, unused, a bric a brac oddity from a bygone age.
As a child, I loved tuning that radio's dials to pick up long wave stations with exotic names, Warsaw, Oslo, Moscow and Allouis - (I got to Allouis, many years later when I lived near Bourges in central France). There was better reception on the medium wave band, where we got to listen to Luxemb'g and Radio Eireann, along with those old BBC stations, the Light programme and the Home Service. Inevitably, the fixed bakelite radio gave way to the transistor and portability. I still loved it though and when a college friend suggested he replace the valves with transistors I jumped at the chance and handed the radio over for an upgrade. I never saw it again. Perhaps it made its way to a shelf in a London pub.
I have vivid recollections of the BBC programmes from back then: Children's Favourites, Mrs Dale's Diary and of course, the Archers. Old Walter Gabriel's voice fairly boomed out of and seemed to suit the bakelite.
I learned recently of a company that overhauls and sells these old radios. It has some handsome models on its website. I will be checking, for much as I love my new iPod, I still hanker after a bakelite Bush.
They'll be close to 60 years old now. I wonder if they still pick up Workers' Playtime.
