Gaga Radio

It was my trip to the supermarket earlier this week that brought the memories flooding back.  Memories of a period about five o'clock on winter Saturdays when absolute silence was the rule.  My father sat beside the radio listening to the football results.  When he was not serving overseas, my father regularly bought his postal order and sent off his football pools coupon, hoping against all experience that one week he would hit the jackpot by forecasting seven drawn games and winning the Treble Chance.  I think the most he ever won was ten and six - 53p in new money.

The programme - Sports Report, I think it was called - was introduced by a snatch of this music:


I can hear those results now.  The reader (could it possibly have been James Alexander Gordon all those years ago?) was always very careful over his voice inflections and one could tell as he read the name of the home team whether the match was a home win, an away win or a draw.

Then there was the shipping forecast.  This was broadcast at set times during the day, possibly before the 6.00am news, possibly in place of the standard weather forecast.  I don't remember those details.  The seas around the British Isles are divided into areas such as Rockall, Shannon, Viking, Heligoland.  I don't suppose there are many people who actually know where all those areas are, but they were ( and possibly still are for all I know) read out in a prescribed order, each followed by a code-like series of numbers indication such things as wind speed and direction, visibility, barometric pressure.  All way above my child's head.

And the market report.  Not the stock market, but the stock market: prices of cattle, pigs, vegetables of various types.  The one that always puzzled me was, "cabbages for boys".  It was many years before I realised they were really saying, "cabbages, savoys".

It was a savoy cabbage I bought in the supermarket.