We were talking about it at work today, at
around 11.30pm every weeknight there would be the final program called Epilogue
in which someone talked about Jesus while attempting to sit up straight in a
big chair, then the screen would disappear into a little dot and there would be
darkness until around 10.30am when the test card would come on with the transmission
information for TV repairmen being read out. No mobiles or emails in those
days, the TV you worked on also gave you the information you needed. I remember
listening to how Pontop Pike and Bilsdale transmitters would be off line at
certain times excited because I knew that soon the real TV would start.
It was only weekends when TV started
earlier at around 8am we would have the Banana Splits, a program called Why don’t
you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring
instead’ (now replaced by a program called Big Brother) then an old black &
white movie, usually a movie about WW2. These movies were later replaced with
programs like Swap Shop and TISWAS.
For those who do not remember it was 1983
when breakfast TV started, for the first time ever we could turn the TV on to
hear the news instead of having to listen to the radio. That caused a huge
change as the radio ‘breakfast’ DJ spot was no longer the best and all radio
concentration moved to ‘drive time’. A term we take for granted now but that
was never used before TV invaded the morning schedules.
At that time they didn’t change schedules
for school holidays either, during the summer holidays TV still started at
around 11am in the morning, I was usually out playing by then, although I do
have to admit that there were some rainy mornings when I would be sitting there
at 10.55am just waiting to see if they would start just a few minutes early.
Of course in the early 70’s they started to
transmit school programs (even in the summer holidays) at around 9.30am so
there was something to watch until midday when the BBC would do ‘Watch with
Mother’ (so named because mother would plonk you in front of it and go and do
something else) and ITV would put on Rainbow.
This hour of children’s TV would be
followed by some news, then a program called Crown Court, a drama in which
people talked nicely to each other about petty crime. Then General Hospital, more
children’s programs, crossroads and the news.
24 hour TV just did not exist, and overall
I don’t remember missing it too much because it wasn’t there.
While I am remembering, does anyone
remember Paulus the Woodgnome, voiced by Spike Milligan and puffing his pipe in
front of the children. If not here is something to help you remember.
I rarely have nightmares but when I do they
are the really scary ones, the ones that tear at me with loss or instil me
with irrational fears so that I always wake up agitated, or scared, or ashamed at
something that I only dreamed.
I hardly ever get these nightmares, but I
have had one every night for the last four nights.
All different, nothing that I can see that
ties them together.
In
the last few weeks I have been given a new project at work. For a long time the
boss has talked about doing a magazine about alternative investments and so he
put me onto it and off it went.
It has meant that for the first time I have started to have to delve into the
world of finance and how the price of beans in Chile can have an effect on
the price of gas in Birmingham. OK so I am in the
extreme there, but you get the picture.
I
have just had to do a piece on oil and alternative energy and I was quite
amazed at what I didn’t know.
For example, did you know that oil companies won't be building more refineries?
Why? Because it takes 25 years for a refinery to pay for itself and there won't be enough oil left to refine by the time new refineries could move into profit.
There
are around 800 oil refineries in the world. The top 25 oil refineries go
through around one thousand one hundred and eighty three million, three hundred
and ninety thousand barrels of oil per day. If you want that in gallons as a
number it is 49,698,987,000 (Forty nine billion, six hundred and ninety eight
million nine hundred and seventy eight thousand) gallons of crude oil from just
25 of the 800 operating refineries.
That is like emptying lake Tahoe every day of the year.
So,
no wonder that we are going to run out of oil within 25 to 30 years.
The
really scary thing is that there is no alternative at all, and the only
possible (hydrogen) will take at least 50 years of scientific development to
teach us how to produce it in the quantity that we will need.
So
no huge hydrogen refineries for at least 50 years and no petrol.
This
means that no one will have large cars and all of the out of town shopping
centres will be no good, so everything will come back to town centres. Also you
will have to cycle everywhere and the price of bicycles will go through the
roof.
Worldwide
markets will die and we wont be able to get coconuts at Asda anymore.
Flights
abroad will be too expensive and everyone will have to holiday in Clacton by the sea (unless a
better seaside town comes to the fore)
Actually,
I quite like the sound of it. Perhaps oil is the cause of the worlds problems.
