And Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation

I have now purchased an unassumingly small metallic box. It looks like a featureless rectangular tea caddy. To me it is a little object of desire. And, more importantly, it allows me to do something which I have sorely missed for the last few months.

For a confirmed addict like myself arriving in Catalonia was the start of a period of ‘cold turkey’ which made settling in to my new adopted country, well, unsettling.

Of course there were ways to feed my habit; deals were done, but they were expensive and the product was often ‘impure.’ Invariably a fix would go wrong and I had to deal with the frustration of partial satisfaction and then having what I wanted snatched away.

Some days better than others. But they were generally dark days.

Eventually I found a supplier who could give me constant access, but the final product was often unsatisfactory, often degraded and simply not what I really wanted.

Now, I am satisfied. I am happy. My addiction is fed whenever I want. And the product is gooooooood.

I am talking, of course, about listening live to Radio 4.

Only other Radio 4 enthusiasts (aka fanatics) will understand the horror of the prospect of indefinite withdrawal from the finest radio station in the world by finding yourself in a foreign country.

Yes, I know that you can go to the BBC web page and get a live feed; that you can get podcasts; that there are ‘on demand’ programmes. All this I know. But the true enthusiast just clicks on and allows the programming wash over him as he is taken from Gardening to Ghana; from Shoes to Stocks – the Radio 4 range, unequalled anywhere else in the universe!

A laptop is portable, but drifting around the flat and plonking a laptop next to the kettle is simply unsatisfactory and too showily technological.

And now my restrained little metallic box is with me.

I have an internet radio!

I can make a cuppa and my little metallic box (LMB) in the kitchen doesn’t look out of place. A hop and a skip into the living room and the simple elegance of the LMB enhances the room design while relaying the well modulated tones of a Radio 4 pundit. Where ere I go (within reach of our broadband wifi) there goeth Radio 4 with me.

Home at last!

Though, thinking about it, wasn’t ‘Home at last!’ something that St John Rivers said in ‘Jayne Eyre’? That chilling personification of higher selfishness would have been a far better person if he had had an internet radio tuned to Radio 4. And he would certainly have had a better chance with Jayne!

But I digress.

What, I hear you ask, did I listen to first?

It is a measure of how much I have missed Radio 4 that I sat down and listened to The Archive Hour.

That in itself is not surprising: that sort of programme is one of the delights of the radio station. The fact that it was written and narrated by a Living Legend, the broadcaster Ray Gosling makes my listening to it almost unbelievable. Gosling’s lovingly preserved and displayed regional tones; ethos and aged gravitas nauseate me. His drawling delivery and faux naivety create in me the same skin crawling irritability that ‘Down Your Way’ with the even more unutterable Brian Johnston created for me years ago back in Cardiff.

While we are on the subject of BBC Radio Heresy, I also hate the Late Night Shipping Forecast and loathe the ‘Sailing By’ music. You will realise that these admissions are totally unacceptable to the real devotees of Radio 4 who actually buy recordings of ‘Sailing By’ and excitedly send in their nominations for the Person They Would Most Like to Hear Reading the Shipping Forecast. Sad buggers! I may be an ‘enthusiast’ but I have my limits! Just!

I would not be surprised to find out that Stephen Fry was born immaculately out of Radio 4, he is so quintessentially a representation of what Radio 4 dedicated listeners would like to think themselves to be: urbane, witty, sophisticated, learned, articulate and omnivorously interested and interesting! How we like to kid ourselves!

In the early days of radio connecting to a radio station was much more of an adventure than instant pleasure at the flip of a switch. Then, once one had turned the power on, one had to wait (so I’ve been told) for something or other, possibly the valve or the crystal, to warm up. When that was done there was an action called ‘tweaking the cat’s whisker’ to get the thing to work. Laboriously, over a cumbersome pair of headphones you might be lucky and eventually get to hear the distant voices from Ally Pally.

Plus ça change!

With my new internet radio there is something which characterises the ethos of the Radio 4 middle class listener: ‘delayed gratification’!

A switch turned on is merely the prelude to a process closely allied to the ancient manipulation of feline sensory apparatus. Slowly the machine searches, refines, finds and buffers and then, eventually and gratifyingly, the voices from the Great Institution.

Today is Sunday. The Archers Omnibus.

I have been in Spain since late June and heard nothing of The Archers. Yet one Omnibus and it is as if six months of missed episodes are nothing; the seamless slotting back in is as if I had never been away.

BBC Radio 4: it’s the way you live!