Another perfect day

The first thing I do when I come downstairs in the morning is put on the kettle. The second thing I do is put on the radio. I always have the radio on in the background.

I grew up in a radio family. I have an abiding memory of my paternal grandfather slight of frame and stooped with age standing at the large work table in the centre of his kitchen, the week's newspapers spread out before him, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette (Kent, soft pack) in the other. Always a lit cigarette and a glass to sip at.

At his back the antiquated range and next to it the equally old refrigerator, against the wall to his left the ice box that had preceded the 'fridge but never been evicted from the kitchen. Opposite him some cupboards and a bench on which he kept his radio.

In general he preferred not to be troubled by children, believing that they should be outside and exercising or indoors and studying (or asleep). But he never believed more strongly in the adage that children should be seen but not heard than for those few moments each day when Blue Hills was being broadcast. The Archers is the British equivalent. I've no idea if there's an American equivalent but somehow doubt it. All I can recall now of Blue Hills is the evocative theme ... after all it was the signal for us to make ourselves scarce.

Blue Hills ran for 27 years from 1949 to 1976 daily, and in so doing it become the longest running serial in Australian radio history. Blue Hills' success seems largely to have been due to its very rural content and appeal; television arrived later in the bush and as a result radio endured until a later date in rural parts of the country as the primary source of information and entertainment. It was broadcast during the day when people listened to the radio while doing other tasks, rather than at night as other serials had been.

Incidentally the same woman (Gwen Meredith) wrote every single episode and if this biography is still accurate she's possibly off fly fishing somewhere, and at 98 years of age that isn't bad going either.

My grandfather was born up in the North East to a man who'd been forced from the land by the rabbit plague and the financial crash of the 1890s; the bush remained in his blood until the day he died. For him Blue Hills must have been something like a brief daily visit home.

We had the radio on in our house and one of the signatures I recall vividly is the introductory music for weekly radio program Singers of Renown. It was a very long time before I could appreciate this hourly showcase of great voices.

The football was always on during the winter on Saturday afternoons, but that was back in the days when the VFL was all, and it comprised 12 teams; six games played each Saturday afternoon - and a choice of highlights/panel discussions on TV afterwards.

Ash Wednesday happened or more accurately began on 16 February 1983 (on my sister's birthday as it happens). I was in my first job, working at the bottom end of town near Spencer Street railway station (now called something else). My boss offered to drive me home on what was a dreadfully hot day so I accepted. The cars were all kept in a basement car park directly beneath us so we didn't see the outside world until we drove up the ramp and out onto Little Collins Street. I had a pair of glasses with photo-chromatic lenses and as we reached the outdoors I said something to the effect of "gee, it's brown with these on!".

Yup it was brown alright but it had nothing to do with those lenses. The death toll from the fires was 73. All in all those fires burnt out over a million acres of land in Victoria and South Australia, resulting in devastated crops, stock and wildlife. Bob turned on the radio which was tuned to one of the commercial stations. We were just in time to hear them transfer to South Australia and we listened in horrified silence as an Adelaide journalist Murray Nicholl broadcasting live-to-air described the destruction of his own home in the Adelaide Hills.

Radio has a capacity for delivering such moments which TV can rarely match. In fact the only equivalent I can think of off the top of my head is the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger. Radio has a flexibility which lends itself to dealing with emerging and fluid situations.

Today has been a case in point and actually what prompted this series of reminiscences. The morning began with me telephoning The Fat Bastard (but not before putting on the kettle and the radio) to let him know he should be awake and at work. He'd fallen asleep over at his mate's yet again, not a bad thing in some ways but I'd rather he didn't lose his job just yet.

And while I waited for the kettle to boil I began to take in that something of a National Security nature was kicking off. My first reaction was a warranted cynicism: yesterday John Reid makes a speech warning Her Maj's subjects that they'll have to give up some [more] of their rights and freedoms for a while as their part in the War on Terror; today we've apparently got a Security Spectacular to underline the need for that War and for the surrender of those rights and freedoms.

I'm all for a good conspiracy theory over my first cup of coffee but...

As this story has unfurled it has become apparent that this Security Spectacular involves far too many people for it to be nothing other than a cheap stunt by the Home Office designed to convince Brits of the need to live in something resembling more and more a Police State. For TV to achieve what radio has achieved this morning in communicating this story as it has taken shape all normal programming would have to be suspended (except in the case of 24 hour news channels).

Radio on the other hand can integrate an emerging story with normal programming and has done so with aplomb.

I'm now going to switch over to the Frogs for a bit; I'm now thoroughly bored by reports of congestion at and around Heathrow. I got that point a couple of hours ago and I can recite by heart the list of things people are currently permitted to take onto a plane with them.

Off to work this afternoon, so must go get ready.