Country Life
By IAN NIALL
01-o Boa, who lives at the back of beyond but has electricity in his cottage. stopped me the other day to ask if I had seen something on television. I had to confess that I hadn't because we haven't got one, which seemed to strike Old Bob with the same effect as if I had said we got our water from the well, which he does. Even in the 'back country' television aerials are sometimes commoner than water mains. I re- member the novelty of the first wireless set in a remote farmhouse in Scotland, where, hitherto, en- tertainment depended upon the gramophone or the varying talents of local singers. Alas for that pro- jected evening of radio, an electric storm made it a fiasco and we were left to our own resources, the singing of `When you and I were young, Nellie' and Other sentimental airs best rendered by those with soulful eyes and sad moustaches. There was, in those days, an innocent delight in dancing reels to music from a scratched and cracked gramophone record, and how the delf on the dresser clattered to the Pounding of too enthusiastic feet! One doesn't men- tion such outlandish memories in rural company these days. Anything but the most recent television programme as a topic suggests that one remembers Ladysmith, and no one, without the distinction of being the oldest inhabitant, cares to be considered quite so 'antique.'
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