I was musing on this during the weekend and a few things came to mind.
There was a time when a small blue portable typewriter played a massive part in my life. It was a present from my parents and little did I know how important it would be to me.
I remember inventing a simple football game. I used to invent lots of games as I have always been somebody who could amuse themselves for hours. I guess I still am to some extent.
I played entire seasons. It was a simple game based on Division One of the Football League. That subsequently became the Premier League.
I would take the fixture list or maybe I worked them out myself and then play matches with the home team having 10 rolls of a dice and the away team having seven. That gave the home team an advantage which they would also enjoy on the real field of play. Each time a six was rolled it was a goal. After each set of matches I would work out the table and I typed everything up on my portable blue typewriter.
It certainly helped my maths. In those days it was two points for a win and one for a draw. Now a win is three points. So I had to calculate a team's points. If teams were level on points their position would be decided on goal average. Today it's much simpler with goal difference. That means just taking the number of goals conceded away from the number of goals scored. Goal average consisted of the goals scored divided by the goals conceded. There were no calculators in those days. So I had to do the division either in my head or on paper. I soon learnt that if a team had scored 39 goals and conceded 18 they had a goal average of 2.16. As I write this I'm still doing this in my head.
I used to type up all manner of things like cricket scores etc.
Then when I went off to journalism college, the little blue typewriter went with me and when I started work in Lowestoft and then subsequently in Norwich, Cromer and Beccles it was there in the office by my side.
I would take two sheets of what was known as copy paper and insert a sheet of what was known as carbon paper in order to give me a copy of every story written. Copy paper was just cheap offcut paper often with adverts on the other side. Goodness knows how many top international and national stories were typed on this kind of paper.
One copy would wing it's way by various means (usually van or bus) to head office where it would find it's way to the sub editors who would check it for grammar, spelling and accuracy. I later became a sub editor.
I kept the other copy for reference and in case the original got lost. At the end of the week when the stories had been published, this copy went on a metal spike and got thrown away after a few weeks.
I don't remember exactly when I got rid of the little blue typewriter. It must have been when technology took over and typewriters were no longer used. I guess I eventually took it to the dump but can't remember doing so. It had served me well and I'm sure I was sorry to say goodbye.
The same thing happened with a black and white portable television which was another present from my parents. It had three buttons - one for BBC 1, one for BBC 2 and one for ITV. Those were the only channels in those days. Now we have hundreds. I didn't have an aerial connection in my bedroom so relied on an indoor aerial which took the form of a loop of metal on the back of the set. It never worked that well and reception was intermittent at best, but I felt like a King, being able to go to my room to watch what I wanted, albeit from a very limited service. It was similar trying to listen to Radio Luxembourg on a transistor radio where the reception kept fading in and out and sometimes disappearing altogether.
I kept that TV long after I left home but can't remember at what point I ditched it. Today I can still remember exactly what it looked like but I guess it just outlived its usefulness or it might have gone wrong.
Here are some other musings.
Dansette record player. If like me you are of a certain age you will probably remember having one of these and stacking about six or seven vinyl 45 singles on top of each other. They would drop down in turn as the arm and needle waited for that to happen. It was usually fine until three or four dropped in one go or one of them was warped which resulted in the next one playing slowly or making strange scraping noises.
I kept my Dansette until a few years ago when I got rid of my 45s and gave the machine to a friend who has a collection of them. The sound from these machines was tinny but all part of the process of growing up and developing a love of music.
Football programmes - As a boy I had quite an extensive collection of football programmes - part of sporting history. I gave these to a young enthusiast many years ago. I also cellected a number of those part work magazines and still have a collection of film and art ones. I collected another set entitled The Game which I sent to the tip a few years ago after not being able to find a new home for them and realising that all the information is now readily available online. I did the same with a collection of cricket magazines after failing to find anyone that wanted them.
White tennis balls - who remembers when tennis balls were white and not yellow? I came across one of these recently when tidying the garage. It had lost most of its bounce and was certainly a relic from the past. It's probably still in the garage. I wonder why the colour changed.
A very old dictionary that I just can't throw away. I have no idea how I came by this. It's a substantial tome that I have often thought of throwing away as it's not in particularly good condition. But what stops me is the written inscription on the inside cover. The dictionary was presented as a school prize to my maternal grandfather Frank Owen Dew. He died four years before I was born so it's the only piece of him that I possess.
I will continue with some more random reminiscences and musings tomorrow. Today I'm off for a shingles vaccine. I hope there's some point to it.