NOTES ON A SMALL CITY

Richard Wyatt: Notes on a small city

Columnist Richard Wyatt remembers his first cat’s whisker radio, his early experiences of television with Muffin the Mule, and a ride on a hand-built pirate ship that had its top sawn off

Ichanced upon a copy of journalist and broadcaster Justin Webb’s current autobiography on display in a Bath bookshop. It’s called The Gift of a Radio and although his childhood takes him back to the 1970s, the title took me and my memories much further into the past.

My father wasn’t around too much during the first few years of my life –being an engineer in the Merchant Navy and employed on the Bristol City line. However, whenever he came home on leave I was able to boast the sort of presents that my peers could not match. A Micky Mouse car, chewing gum, instant powdered coffee –the sort of things only available on the other side of the pond, known more geographically as the Atlantic Ocean. But it’s the memory of my first radio that came to mind while admiring that book cover. My first attempt at tuning into the BBC was via a cat’s whisker radio my father brought me. The first gadget I ever owned, and probably the one responsible for putting me on a slippery and, lately, moreexpensive appliances path.

Those of my generation will no doubt be aware that such a radio was not powered by a battery or mains electricity. It received broadcasts via an internal crystal –hence its other name, a crystal wireless. The cat’s whisker was a coil of wire that touched the crystal and helped tune in radio channels. I remember it being a small black bakelite object with a tuning knob and, because the signal was so weak, a crude pair of earphones plugged into the device. My father managed somehow to get an aerial wire deployed across the roof of our house. There I sat in my bedroom, a copy of The Radio Times beside me, tuning into Home Service programmes, especially plays, that I had underlined to listen to. I also remember a neighbour called Mrs Venn who was the first person in our part of Worle near Westonsuper-Mare to own a television. She would let a group of us local children in on a regular basis, calling us off our street playground to marvel at Muffin the Mule. Everything was of course in black and white. I remember that ITV didn’t switch to colour until I had joined HTV West in the early 1970s!

When we finally got our own set there was never really an opportunity to collapse in front of the telly. My father was constantly

The cat’s whisker was a coil of wire that touched the crystal and helped tune in radio channels ❝

on his feet slapping the top of that boxed cathode ray tube to stop the horizontal hold slipping. However, my formative years were not all black and white by any means. I was three and a half when the Queen was crowned and remember the coronation fête in which us village kids were all given spoons tied with red,white and blue ribbon.

Back in those days we were living with our maternal grandparents who just happened to be landlord and lady of The Lamb Inn at Worle. Every year the pub entered the local carnival and constructed giant floats for the procession that would wind its way out of the village and as far as Winscombe on the western edge of the Mendip Hills.

I was allowed to ride on board a pirate ship my grandfather’s regulars had helped build through Worle High Street. Then I was taken off while the carnival parade made its way out into the countryside. There was, at the time, a rather low railway bridge at Winscombe which proved to be an obstacle in terms of the galleon’s main mast proudly flying the skull and crossbones. There was only one thing for it –they had to saw the top off to allow it through. I am sure I was told a cannon ball had seen it off! My grandfather passed away too young at 56, just days before my 16th birthday. I was doing GCEs and helping my grandmother keep the pub going until she was able to hand over the business to a new tenant. I remember the sections of that pirate ship had been stored behind the skittle alley and were still there at that time.

All these years later I rang the current landlady of The Lamb Inn to ask if the ship was still in situ. We still have the skittle alley she said but nothing is hidden behind it. Memories are the place where things remain unchanged. Thank God for them! n

Richard Wyatt runs the Bath Newseum: bathnewseum.com