A hundred years ago, a delightful if fictional couple, from London but fluent in French, decided to visit Paris.
The Duponts rented a little apartment near Montmarte for a few months. One night, Mr Dupont proudly brought home a “portable” radio.
As you can see, the Duponts are an adorable couple, much more likeable than the family in the Italian equivalent text “Brush up your Italian”, but that is a conversation for another day.
A hundred years later, I am also struggling with radio technology. I’ve got two flash appliances with tuners, and I can get neither of them to work.
I’ve spent hours twiddling various nobs to no avail and I can see I’m shortly going to end up buying a little transistor radio of my very own. Sometimes it’s nice to listen to the radio instead of choosing your own music.
In another amusing demonstration of symmetry, twenty years ago I used to sneer when theatre staff wanted to listen to middle of the road radio stations like The Breeze during operating lists. (“This music is so lame! It’s for boring old people!”) And now, when I’m driving with any of my adult children in the car, it’s the radio station they want to hear playing! And now I like it too! Oh the irony.