Comments

Summer holidays — 10 Comments

  1. Heh! I remember Pye stuff. They were a big name in the sixties. I even remember the Pye logo! Kind of centred round the 'Y'.

    I've worked in factories (albeit briefly) back when Hellf 'n' Spasticity didn't exist. Apart from that clocking in business, I quite enjoyed it. Perhaps because my few spells were brief enough not to pall.

    But mostly I've spent my life either working for myself or in some sort of sub-contract situation, so I've never enjoyed the luxury of paid holidays. Of course, the other side of the coin is that I can pretty much please myself when, and for how long I will take a break.

    If I can afford to, that is! 🙂

    • I didn't mind the clocking in bit.  Possibly the cash made up for it as it was the first real pay I'd had [the previous job paid £10 a week].  Mind you, if you'd told me then that later in life, a weeks wage would just about have got me two packs of baccy or four pints of stout!!

      When it comes to freedom though, it's hard to beat retirement. 

    • Welcome Fred!  Radios were manufactured at Pye when I worked there.  They were in  little back room and were considered inferior!  We were the elite working on televisions.  Modern wrist watch and credit card sized radios don't quite have the same gravitas as the old valve sets somehow.

  2. I remember the advertisements for Pye, and think the company may have had a sponsored programme on Radio Eireann, although before the launch of transistor radios our home Wireless was a Bush. In my childhood we respected the big wireless as an important piece of sitting room furniture. Pubs had a wireless so the old and young men of the town could listen to horse racing on Saturday afternoons. The routine was for working men to study the sports pages of the daily papers (Irish Independent, Irish Press and Daily Express) then pick their potential winning horses before toddling down to the bookmaker's office to lay their bets. They spent the afternoon listening to live commentary on the races while quaffing pints with friends. Nowadays I still listen to the radio, as it is called, but miss the Big Thing with the names of exotic faraway radio stations written on the dial screen.

    • The wireless certainly took a place of pride.  I think ours was a Philips – took ages to warm up and then had to be fine tuned with a "magic eye".  Athlone, Luxembourg, Hilversum, Paris?  Exotic names indeed [apart from Athlone!].

  3. Greetings Grandad !

    Once upon a time I worked for Cossors (in ‘arlow, Essex, innit…) and various radio ham colleagues had Pye Bantams nailed into the back of whatever car they owned. One had a Fiat 500 with a mag mount whip antenna on top – looked like a radio controlled toy car as it trundled through the gate and down the yard.
    Happy days 🙂

    • Greetings Gareth and welcome!  The brother used to be one of them – EI6AL [if I remember correctly].  Maybe he still is?  He used to string cables all around the garden and up on the roof.  I suppose it kept him out of trouble.   CQ20? CQ20?

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