A BOX OF MAGICAL MEMORIES

Well just looky here!

There I was surfing the internet when I came upon an image that set some memories flooding back into my mind.

Yes, it was this picture of a Rediffusion TV, virtually identical to the one that sat in the corner of our 'living' room when I was just a young kid. Got to say - ours was in much better condition back then. Like everything in our proud working class home - polished till gleaming. The screen was probably the size of an average iPad of today but monochrome of course, no colour whatsoever and nowhere near as sharp a picture.

However, as I say, the memories started rolling in, at first pretty mundane - run of the mill stuff - but leading onto some pretty amazing events that appear unachievable today, even in our present technological age.

It was the 1960's when we had that tv and obviously, as a family, we sat together for hours at weekends watching Morecambe & Wise, Sunday Night at the Palladium and all those incredible entertainment shows from the heyday of British TV history. Weekdays were filled with excellent programmes too, the groundbreaking Blue Peter and a whole host of things for kids at tea time and way too many drama series to even mention. Thursdays gave us the famous Top of the Pops and it was just filled with numerous stars from the Rolling Stones to the Beatles. Altogether it was the stuff grandparents drive their grandchildren crazy with 'tv was so much better when we were kids'.

But then there was the very 'special live broadcast' stuff.

I remember clearly (as a seven year old in the mid 60's) playing with my toy horses and carts, kneeling on the floor in front of our tv and immitating the procession as the state funeral of Winston Churchill processed on the screen above.

Then there was the most exciting day (yes - the pinacle) of English sporting history when the whole family sat anxiously around our tiny tv on a summers afternoon in 1966. We eventually saw England beat Germany after extra time and watched with pride as our team lifted the World cup. I remember clearly, we each had a saucepan and as each goal went in we hammered the adjoining terrace wall like crazy and our neighbours (the lovely Jordan family) hammered back. I was nine years old. You just don't forget such historic events filled with so much joy and passion. I can honestly hear that knocking on the wall in my head as I write.

Roll on another three more years and as a twelve year old I was woken in the middle of the night to come downstairs and witness man's first steps on the moon. Beat that! Almost fifty years on and with all our hi-tech innovations we have today that's still not yet been repeated.

So, never mind today's dirty great colourful, pin sharp screens showing their 'fake' celebrity this and 'fake' reality that. We were the fortunate ones, raised on all round entertainment, classic comedy, proper acting, talented musical performers and true sporting legends - all in our living rooms.

It all happened inside that 'Magical Memory Maker Rediffusion TV.

Just could have done with a picture clear enough to see and sound clear enough to hear.

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FOOTNOTE 1

One day in the second half of the 1960's a tv engineer arrived at our house. I clearly remember feeling really disturbed and anxious as he drilled a huge great circular hole in the side of our treasured tv.

He then fitted a large circular plate with two thick buttons in it. He showed mum how to push them in and she could only just manage the effort needed to move them. The incredibly stiff buttons made a very loud clunking sound as they operated.

405 lines was our 'normal' BBC1 & ITV setting but if I remember rightly 625 gave us the ability to watch BBC2.

Three bloomin channels to watch - can you imagine how excited we were.

FOOTNOTE 2

There was no losing the remote control in those days. It was firmly bolted to the wall next to the window ledge, behind the curtain and attached by a long flexible lead that tripped everyone up.