TV on Toast
Our household functioned like a budget cruise ship in the mid 1970s, a no-frills liner with the loosest of dress codes. The hub, the entertainment lounge, was of course our front room, which opened pretty much the second I could get out of my school uniform.
There were house rules. Watching television in the morning was strictly verboten without a sick note. There was nothing on, anyway, apart from Play School and the Schools Service. The latter was only watched by those paid to (teachers) and their classroom prisoners.
Eating meals off plates wobbling on your knees was also frowned upon. We were expected to sit at the table pitching up to the buffet. Not at the same time mind, apart from Sunday lunchtimes, when my father wasn’t working.
Tea breaks were, of course, sacrosanct in an Irish household. Indeed, a highlight of the evening schedule was trooping off to the kitchen for a snack . Toast only, it should be noted. Cakes and biscuits were a never available as my father would work through them directly from the cupboard, leaving only the tatters of the packaging.
The television stayed switched on until bedtime: 10.30 (tops) on school-nights. If visitors called, the protocol was to turn the volume down, which was annoying for me. Everyone would steal glances a the box, the skill of following the storyline of Coronation Street while deep in conversation being generally well developed.
For top-notch guests — clergy or visitors from the USA — the set would be switched off. It would go on again for the Nine O’Clock News, even the Bishop of Baltimore tuned in for that. And once on it would generally stayed that way, to my relief.
On one occasion my great aunt Sister Kyran was with us, which was bad news for On the Buses fans (everyone). I skulked in the kitchen until I could hear that day’s dismal news fade away. Then I sauntered into the front room.
I was hoping to be treated to ten minutes of highlights from an FA Cup replay. More likely was yet another Horse of the Year Show (horse years seemed to be the reverse of dog ones, as this came on at least six times per annum).
In the event it was the worst option of the lot — a morose Play for Today about a doomed extra-marital affair in suburban Leeds. A couple were sitting in an empty cafe. The woman was stirring her coffee. Nobody talking.
It was too late for a graceful retreat. Planting my tea tray onto the formica coffee table I sank into ‘my’ armchair.
I can’t go on like this, Steve. When you’re not there…
As I reached for my toast, the scene changed abruptly to a bedroom. Moody coffee time was over. I stop chomping — mouth agape. Silence descended.
Suddenly my father catapulted out of his armchair. The screen turned black. ‘The rubbish they put on these days,’ he declared to a murmur of approval. ‘Now can I get you another cup of tea, Sister?’
Rubbish or not, my father watched plenty of TV. It was my mother who was generally indifferent to the lure of the box. Always painfully private, she span off into her own world after we lost my sister. Much of her final decade she spent marooned in her room, too far out, as Stevie Smith put, for any of us to stop her drowning.
There were occasional glimpses of sunshine though. The one I remember most vividly came while watching the infamous Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols — the foundation event of sweary TV.
How we happened to be alone together puzzles me. Mum only made rare appearances in the front room, while Today was at the wrong time (too early) and on the wrong channel (ITV).
But there we were, trapped with the Sex Pistols — stoned, smirking and swearing — with Mr Grundy goading them on. I didn’t dare to look at my mother.
Then I heard her laughing. The more they snarled, the more she roared. ‘Oh, those boys are funny!’ she said, evidently unphased by the latest threat to civilisation and all we stand for.
My mum passed in 1983, a few years after I had left for College. Gradually, the house began to more directly reflect Dad’s singular character — open, friendly, ramshackle, cranky on occasion but always big hearted.
The entertainment lounge closed for business, reopening as a gloomy Irish parlour-like room for special occasions. The fun moved with the TV, downstairs into the, ahem, kitchen-diner. This was now Dad’s new command and control centre.
I retained my bedroom — and reappeared at various points like a recurring villain in a sitcom. I specialised in sticking my snout in with unwanted advice. There were many bees in my bonnet, the general theme being that my father should get with the 80s beat.
I campaigned for a video player. When this arrived I outraged Dad by tearing open the packaging — his approach was that of a bomb disposal expert tasked with saving the village school. I then gave him a high-handed tutorial on using the timer.
‘I can’t be bothered with that,’ he said, opting to simply pressed record to cover the entire ITV evening schedule. This he would then sit through when he came in off lates.
‘Dad, you can fast-forward through the adverts. Look,’ I said, showing off my mastery of the remote.
‘Quit that.’
‘But you don’t have to sit through-
‘QUIT THAT AND STOP MESSING WITH THAT YOKE BEFORE I -’
I can see now why my meddling infuriated him. After a long shift, he just wanted the comfort of the familiar world, not the sped up version. Plus, he couldn’t stop the fast forward from careering on for twenty minutes past its destination. There was that.
My father was not an interior designer but he had a distinctive style. In the kitchen here were two huge armchairs in front of the telly, a pouffe, a formica coffee table (for essentials: the paper, his pipe, tobacco, tea, toast etc). Behind the TV, the kitchen spread higgedly-piggedly — like someone had just unpacked boxes where the removal men had plonked them.
Every item was built to last though — his washing machine would see record-breaking loads, the cooker would soldier on for decades
The second armchair was often occupied by various family members: me, his nephews/nieces/brother and sisters all being regulars — plus a large cast of occasional guests. I think all of us were in thrall to his gift for conversation.
As we chatted, the turned down telly chuntered away reassuringly in the background, like the rumbling engine of a ship. Later when, he was alone, the volume would go up. Higher and higher with each passing year.
Leave him, Sarge! He ain’t worth it!
I’m not sure when I first became aware of Dad’s accelerating deafness. I got used to approaching the house in the Davisville Road to the soundtrack of The Bill (he watched the complete 2,245 episode box set). I would enquire about this and he would brush me off with his usual semi-gag: ‘There’s nothing wrong my hearing. You’re the only one I can’t understand!’
It wasn’t just me though, alas. On one occasion my cousin phoned him from Australia and was deafened by what sounded like a nuclear siren.
‘John, I think your smoke alarm is going off.’
‘Ha? Sure I’m standing right next to it. Oh, wait a minute…’
Eventually another cousin — there are a lot of us — very kindly set him up with the audio equipment to allow him to hear the telly. An unavoidable side-effect of this was that it killed conversation — any comment I made would involve a five minute unplugging process to answer.
So mostly we sat watching in companionable silence, sometimes with my daughter parked a few inches from the screen. That was the only way she could to hear what Tracy Beaker was up to.
TV was a comparative later-comer in my father’s life — Ireland didn’t have a national station until after I was born. Radio had always been there, though and I grew up to the sound of it . Or, to be more precise, to sound of the 24/7 phone-in that was the local commercial station, LBC.
Then one day came the bleak announcement that LBC was closing down. Falling ratings, changing audience demands, blah, blah blah. Dad would no longer be going to sleep to sermons about the appalling pothole maintenance on the Pentonville Road. The London Broadcasting Corporation was literally pulling the plug.
I offered my commiseration. ‘I was really sorry to hear the news, Dad.’
‘Ha? What news?’ he said, not looking up from sorting industrial quantities of allotment onions into freezer bags.
‘About them shutting down LBC. I mean you’ve listened to it for so long.’
He glanced at me, puzzled at my concern. ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘They’ll put something else on.’
More from my memoir 8 Davisville Road here
