Technology has revolutionised the world of entertainment, and the effects were just beginning to make themselves felt when Betty, Jean, Norma and Hilda were growing up in the thirties and forties.

First and foremost, people made their own entertainment, reading, singing and playing games together.

Jean recalls:

Well I think life was a lot simpler really, you know, there weren't televisions, you were lucky if you had a little radio, and you made your...I can remember my father reading Dickens to us; every night he would read something. There was nothing else you know, but it was interesting.

Hilda has vivid memories of her parents' listening to the crystal set and feeling excluded from the activity:

...we only had two sets of earphones, so I was allowed to listen to the children's programmes at five o'clock, Uncle this and Auntie something or other, but then in the evening my mother sat one side of the fireplace and my father the other, and I could hear them laughing and I would say 'what are they saying, why are you laughing?'

Betty's parents also had a crystal set:

We had one in the middle of the table, we sat round and all had our earphones, but if anybody touched it, of course, the cat whisker thing would come off and you'd get shouted at! You didn't dare move, you had to sit absolutely...that was fantastic.

Reception often wasn't very good on the early radio sets, and Jean remembers her father getting so frustrated by the hissing and crackling that he threw the radio on the floor and broke it and said:

'that's it, now we can have a new one'. And we got a Murphy, I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

Eventually, television appeared on the scene. Remembering this provoked an animated discussion!

«---Back to Pilbrow Court