Writing Prompt 12: The Television
Hi-Brite Imperial
A television in a cupboard, disguised to look like a piece of furniture, except this doesn’t work. We all know what this is. I don’t know what an Eskimo or Tahitian design is only that the description would be different now.
What are your memories of televisions or ‘the telly’ as us Brits say?
My dad had a telly when I was growing up that was in the shape of a cube.
The picture it played was in black & white. Imagine that! Incredibly it was also a radio and cassette player. Everything was housed in a cream plastic casing, I think it was made by Panasonic although, honestly, I couldn’t be sure.
He often had the telly, this telly on in the background while he worked, usually sport, motor racing, a Grand Prix somewhere in the world.
I do remember, and I must’ve been very young, maybe five, waiting for the time (was it half past three?) when the children’s TV programmes started their schedule every afternoon after school. No Netflix or satellite or cable TV in England in the 1970s.
And that funny test card picture with the girl writing on a board. Or was she supposed to be playing noughts and crosses, I don’t remember. I didn’t like it much. I thought the girl was creepy.
My mum told me once why she doesn’t like the curtains drawn completely in her bedroom. She remembers aged eight staying with her family at a friend’s house. The friends had a television, my mum’s family didn’t at the time. I guess this would’ve been the 1950s. My mum couldn’t sleep and came downstairs to tell her mum and dad. They were watching the film A Tale of Two Cities. My mum walks into the room just in time to see a man (on the telly) coming through the window at night and stabbing someone to death in their bed. She was so frightened by this that even now all these years later she still sleeps with the curtains not quite closed in her bedroom.
Story first posted February 2019 // Postcard description reads: 23” TV chassis plus Hi-Fi automatic record changer - in one Deluxe, genuine wood cabinet. Available in either Eskimo or Tahitian design © Quantity Postcards 1997
