A WOMAN, A DOG.. AND A RADIO SET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 16, 13 October 1939, Page 13

A WOMAN, A DOG.. AND A RADIO SET

But The Old Formula Failed At The Critical Moment

By

Zenobia

"A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, The more you beat them, the better they b e. " E understand about women and dogs, but there is some doubt as to why beating is good for walnut trees. However, they are beaten for their own good for some reason or another. But I have never heard of beating a radio set, except one; and that was the first set which brought radio within my ken. It was a small, primitive crystal set, and I cannot tell you what make it was or where _it came from. In the dim years of my youth it appeared in my home, and we had numerous pairs of headphones attached to it. It had no proper place in the house, but when in use it reposed in the middle of the floor on the carpet. Beyond the fact that an improved hearing was obtained by twiddling the cat’s whisker on the crystal, not one of us had the least idea how the thing worked. But through it we were able to hear the first programmes of tadio’s infancy, broadcast from the old 2LO station on top of Selfridges’ store in London. It gave us the broadcasts of "Flotsam and Jetsam" and Captain Eckersley, and I recollect hearing the Apassionata played by Lamond. When Kindness Failed But for some reason or other, like Kingsley’s "dear little doll," that set wore out. It may have been because too many people too often rose in a hurry with the earphones ‘still on their heads, and walked away dragging the poor. little set across the floor after them. But anyhow, we ceased to get a really satisfactory reception from it. As I have said, we were not mechanics; and then one day it was discovered that a sudden kick would liven up that dear little set remarkably. "It’s very faint to-night," someone would say, laboriously harnessed to it by a pair of headphones. "Give it a kick, could you, as you pass?" A smart blow with the toe of the boot would set it going merrily. Another way, if one was harnessed to it and did not want

to rise, was to pick it up and bang it down hard on the floor so that all its parts jumped wildly. It would almost always respond. Chopping Out the Walnut Tree We had cut the doubtful walnut tree out of the old adage and substituted a certainty: "A woman, a dog, and a radio set, The more you beat them, the better they get." Until then this radio set was a mere amusement in the home; but something happened to raise it to a status of paramount importance, In May, 1926, a general strike was declared in England, and no newspapers were published. Nobody knew what Mr. Winston Churchill was doing. Nobody knew what was happening at all except from the news bulletins broadcast from the 2LO station. We gathered round our radio set even more anxiously than people do in New Zealand during a Crisis, because it was our only means of contact with what was going on. Omnibuses with smashed windows were

going about the streets loaded with special constables, and it was absolutely imperative to know what Mr. Churchill was doing, One Kick Too Many We listened to two or three bulletins; but on the second evening our radio set fell a trifle faint. Someone, impatient to hear everything, gave it a hasty kick... It fell absolutely silent. The scattered pieces would produce not the slightest sound. In fact it became startlingly obvious that no further kicking would do it any good whatever. Even when we had gathered the bits together and battered them on the floor, they would not give us any indication of what Mr. Churchill was doing. So we had to go without news that night, and walk four miles in a busless London next day-to buy a better set. This time it was called a "Gecophone" and cost 16/6d. Whether it would have responded to beating like the other, I do not know, because it was screwed to the side of a bookcase out of the reach of boots; and as we might hurt ourselves we refrained from striking it with our fists.