Hooray for houseproudness

Spring isn’t even flicking a toe around the corner and I’m at it all ready.

I reorganised my kitchen windowledge garden yesterday, and also reorganised the sitting room so the focus is less toddler and more geriatric parent with an Archers fetish. This evening, husband and I have eaten our dinner in front of the … radio…. and listened to Front Row. Currently he’s deep in a radio play about Rudyard Kipling. I never thought I’d see the day.

Sitting and listening is more me; I prefer not gawping at the box. it’s too noisy and there’s never anything constructive on. The radio (I mean R4, obviously) is more measured, more constant; you can get into the rhythm of the day and the schedule and know what’s coming up. And really, if there’s any more evocative theme tune than that of The Archers I’d like to know what it is.

When I think about how central a part the wireless played in my grandmother’s life, stuck out on a misty promontory in Cornwall, no culture, no glittering lights, I feel quite sad that she never had the opportunities to run up to town that I do; I also think that the television is so irremediably bad that we could all do with disengaging the eye and sitting quiet with the radio on and something fiddly to do in an evening. Let’s bring back the fifties. Best of all, it really makes you sleepy.