1978–1979 Grandparents House

Sometime in late 1977 or early 1978 I had left my first job and wasn’t working, so my mother decided it was time we moved out of the flat above the pie shop and back home to our roots. The problem was we had nowhere to live, so for a while we moved into my grandparents’ house.

By this point I didn’t own much technology of my own. My little 12" black and white portable TV came with me, along with a cassette recorder that I can no longer remember whether it belonged to me or my brother. The Binatone consoles never made the move with us, probably because there simply wasn’t room and, if I’m honest, I was starting to drift away from them anyway.

My grandparents didn’t watch a great deal of television, and when they did it was mostly in the evenings. As always in those days, the TV belonged to the adults, so I had very little say in what was watched. Everything was still in black and white, and the programmes were usually the big light entertainment shows of the time. If I wanted to watch anything myself, I would use my own little portable television in the bedroom. Oddly, the only thing I clearly remember watching on it there was Formula One motorsport.

What makes me smile now is that even when I was younger and came to stay at my grandparents’ house during holidays, I would often bring that same 12" TV with me. I don’t really know why, because most of the time I never even switched it on. I would usually disappear outside with my cousins for most of the day, only coming back in when it got dark or when food appeared.

The piece of technology that really stands out in my grandparents’ house was the enormous radiogram in the front room. Looking back, it was positioned in a very strange place. One speaker pointed into the middle of the room while the other pointed almost directly behind the sofa, which couldn’t have been ideal for sound quality. I’ve no idea what make it was or how old it might have been, but to me it seemed ancient even then.

I was allowed to use it as long as I kept the volume down. That mostly meant listening to the radio or playing records from my grandparents’ collection. Sadly for me, their taste in music was very different from mine. The records mainly consisted of Max Bygraves sing-alongs, The King’s Singers, choirs, and easy listening albums that sounded decades older than the late 1970s around us.

Still, I spent a surprising amount of time with that radiogram. I would slowly tune across the long wave bands searching for strange and distant radio stations, listening to fading voices, whistles, crackles, and stations in languages I couldn’t understand. There was something oddly fascinating about it, especially late in the evening when the signals seemed to travel further.

In the living and dining room there was also a portable radio that was almost permanently switched on in the mornings, usually tuned to BBC Radio 2 or Radio 4. I can still remember sitting at the table eating breakfast while the sound of presenters, news reports, and music drifted through the room. Whenever I got the chance I would retune it myself, again searching for obscure stations hidden between the familiar ones.

Strangely, by the time we eventually moved out, I had actually grown quite fond of listening to Max Bygraves and The King’s Singers. Music and radio that once sounded old-fashioned and dull had somehow become comforting simply because they were tied to that house and that period of my life.

Many years later, when my grandparents moved into a smaller house, I was given the portable radio from the dining room. Amazingly, I still have it today, and it still works perfectly. I also wanted the old radiogram, more for the memories than anything else, but sadly it had already been given or sold to someone else before anyone realised I wanted to keep it.