The Wireless

"On the BBC it was sort of, they’d say: “enemy action, there were bombs dropped in the home counties”. They never gave you any specific place, but if it was in your area you knew it was in your area. Of course there was no television. My father had television before the war, but I mean that just shut down completely. They were only a little screen like that. But I mean in this room that he had sured he’d got lined curtains, and you used to have to draw the curtains to watch the television. Totally different to what it’s like now. [On the radio] there was just the BBC. [They had] a few musical things. Some of the big bands, you know the fellas had gone into the army, like the Squadronaires. That was a band, a family band, that lived in Hanwell in Middlesex. They were called the [Immerson?] brothers. I think there were five and the father who used to conduct. They all went in, except the father who was over the age of being called up, they all went into the Air Force and they had a band that used to broadcast from the BBC occasionally called The Squadronaires. They’d have comedies, it was mostly held over for a Saturday evening. I think Sundays was always, a programme they have now, the hymns. Yes there was that started. A few, a bit of light entertainment. I mean, all the signposts were taken down, all over the country. So unless you knew your way about you could easily get lost. You might be listening to something and then the siren would go, and you’d either have to go to the shelter or switch, I think everything went off. It’s going back a bit now. They kept Children’s Hour sort of thing — stories and things like that."

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