I remember # 7

Carol Hersee on a BBC testcard
Carol Hersee on a BBC testcard

189. I remember delighting in the name of the cricketer Brian Brain

190. I remember Brand X

191. I remember my first football

192. I remember turning off the sound on the television when Vision On was broadcast to impress upon my younger brothers what it was like for the deaf

193. I remember Jackdaws, which were collections of copies of primary source documents about some historical event, gathered together in a folder

194. I remember the Partridge Family

195. I remember the Beaufort Scale

196. I remember collecting miniature busts of French presidents at petrol stations in France on a family holiday

197. I remember Professor Stanley Unwin

198. I remember that the name of the girl seen by a blackboard on the BBC testcard was Carole Hersee

199. I remember Rhoda and her plain sister, who went on to provide the voice for Marge in The Simpsons

200. I remember my friend’s mother who always stood to attention when the national anthem was played at the end of an evening’s television

201. I remember Picador paperbacks

202. I remember the Durutti Column (I still have his first album with its sandpaper cover)

203. I remember TV interludes (the potter’s wheel, the ploughing horse) which the BBC showed during gaps in the programming

204. I remember the round window, the square window and the arched window

205. I remember one man bands

206. I remember Elkan Allan

207. I remember the magician David Nixon

208. I remember Chip Club, whose magazine was circulated to schools with lists of books that children were encouraged to buy

209. I remember Viv Stanshall exclaiming ‘Mandolin!’ (on the album Tubular Bells)

210. I remember when young watching a television interview with a woman who said she expected her menfolk to be violent, and realising that there were different worlds outside of our small corner of Tunbridge Wells

211. I remember the scorpion square dance from The Living Desert

212. I remember a tracking shot of starving Africans in a queue shown on a 1970s TV documentary that just carried on and on and on, past the point of belief

213. I remember Jack Jones the trade unionist, and Jack Jones the singer

214. I remember Professor Branestawm and his many pairs of glasses

215. I remember the great sense of excitement and honour I felt whenever a Shakespeare play was shown on television

216. I remember sky ray lollies

217. I remember Clarence the cross-eyed lion

218. I remember the first Argos catalogue

219. I remember when Foyle’s bookshop made you collect a book from one till then take a slip to a second till where the cashier sat (a system they immediately halted on the death of Christina Foyle – who I also remember, as she sat in on all interviews for prospective staff. I failed the interview)

220. I remember the sense of national shock and shame when England failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup

221. I remember wah-wah pedals

222. I remember playground war games where we divided into English and Germans

223. I remember fording streams

224. I remember coal bunkers

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