Friday 9 April 2010

Our house is a very quiet place

most of the time. We almost never turn the radio on. The television set gets turned on for the international news service and the headlines of the local news service and stays on only if there is something we think we need to know about in more biased detail from the ABC (Australian - not American - think BBC.) We watch the Global Village programme that proceeds that if we happen to be in and we watch the occasional documentary . We rarely watch anything else.
When I was last at university I was puzzled by students who could, apparently, study with the noise of the radio in the background. One student admitted to me that she flipped the switch on the radio as soon as she walked into her study-bedroom. I soon discovered that many other students did the same thing. I do not know what other students did when I first started my tertiary education. I was too busy to find out but I now suspect they also had the radio playing in the background. My father tells me that a brilliant academic friend of his always worked to the radio too.
Me? I prefer silence. I am happy with my own thoughts most of the time. But, I would like to acknowledge that other people feel differently and I thought it was time to introduce you to a most interesting and remarkable radio station in the United Kingdom, in Birkenhead to be more precise. I am not sure whether the people who live there think of themselves as a suburb of Liverpool but even I know that Liverpool is the home of the Beatles and even Ms Whirlwind's generation seems to know about the Beatles.
The people who run Vintage Radio are, or so I understand, "retired". This really means that they have new jobs running a radio station. It can be heard live or on the internet. My yet-to-be-met friend Roger Wright runs a music show on Vintage Radio. He is endeavouring to educate me into an appreciation of the music of 60's and 70's. (Not sure you are succeeding Roger but we can work on it together!) If you do like that sort of thing then Roger does it very well indeed. Of course he used to teach at the University of Liverpool and the best teachers tend to go on thinking of any audience as worthy of the care and attention they once lavished on their students. Here's the link http://www.blogger.com/www.vintageradio.org.uk - try it and tell me what you think. Better still, try it and tell them what you think.

4 comments:

Holly said...

Totally and completely concur with you. I just do not "get" why anyone would want to spend their lives with background noise.

Some music I love and audiobooks are listening things that I choose. But random noise and people's voices rattling on about things which I have no interest?

No thank you

catdownunder said...

Some people love what is called 'talk back' here - audience participation with inance comments from people who 'phone in. I cringe when I hear it!

m said...

I just came across your blog, and want to give another slant to having the radio on. I have moderate hearing loss, and have worn two hearing aids since '97. However, since '92 I have a constant high pitched tinnitus hissing away in my left ear. The hearing aid helps me to get beyond it, but music helps even better.

catdownunder said...

Hello 'm' - that's interesting because I read something somewhere once about helping to overcome tinnitus with music! Obviously you are smart enough to have worked it out for yourself. (Heck - you found my blog!) Seriously, if I ever find it again I will put the reference up for you - unless you already know it.