Radio, Radio

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I've been experiencing an overwhelming sense of yearning lately; a true homesickness for a time period long since passed or a particular landscape.

It's a slippery feeling, very difficult to articulate and although the Germans have a proper word for it (as always!) their translation of "heimweh" will simply not suffice here. And so we turn to the Welsh who offer up "hiraeth" and this is it precisely: a desperate longing, a sharp keening for a sense of a place that felt so right but can never really be attained again.

For me, it is all about the smell and sound of the sea and the sheep with their blank, foolish faces grazing on craggy headlands. A door swinging open to the encouraging smell of a proper pub - beer, thumping music and malt vinegar - and walking in soft, rain afterwards. I recall eating a floury bap stuffed with hard boiled egg and cress and smeared with golden butter that tasted like cream. Coming-of-age days full of promise, when anything was possible and there were deep kissing sessions amidst tall grasses that smelled of sweet clover and heat.

I think I know the culprit that has triggered all this nostalgia.

Ferryland, Newfoundland.

We’ve just returned from a first time visit to Newfoundland, the most Eastern part of Canada and somewhere that D and I have always been drawn to. (And full disclosure: D. has legitimate “Newfie” genealogy so his own interest is at least more credible!)

Signal Hill, Newfoundland

As the plane dipped down over the green flecked waves swirling to foam on those ancient rocks, I felt that same twist of recognition, of coming home, that things would be “restored” somehow, go back to how they should be. My eyes filled with tears. At the same time, there was a kind of clarity when I suddenly realized that this isn’t even my own landscape - how could it be - but instead, a setting I always associate with my mother and what she always wanted to return to after leaving England. Perhaps I still think there is a chance to somehow fulfil her dream via my own life. Maybe it’s because there will always be a strong sense of ‘unfinished business’ which is apparently common in a bereavement that occurs during adolescence.

Or, perhaps it’s just a crackle within my own DNA that will always respond to this romanticized, other worldly feeling of truly belonging to The Old Country and will continue to present itself whenever I’m lowered into this kind of setting. Poetry can bring it on too.

St. John’s, Newfoundland as seen from our window

My early childhood years were immersed in a kind of selective British marinade during which I came to sense my mum’s unspoken but latent unhappiness at ever leaving England in the first place. Our house was full of British food stuffs - Lyle’s Golden Syrup, Bovril, Robertsons’ - and any BBC productions on television provided a guarantee that I’d be allowed to stay up late to watch. I looked forward to receiving a Rupert annual every Christmas and as we read the couplets together - and how charming they were, I still adore Rupert - I was told that England really was like that.

I think my mother’s gratitude to have the life and love she shared with my father far outweighed any sense of entitlement to an actual opinion and she quietly accompanied him to South Africa (she was heavily pregnant at the time of that move and was not even consulted about his decision to accept the position), briefly back to England, then on to Canada and finally to an early retirement on the Isle of Man for a “slower pace of life” that she (uncharacteristically, really) suggested and cultivated.

She was just beginning to flourish as a person in her own right, for a very short time before becoming ill.

Beautiful inside and out

Anyway, after experiencing and embracing all-things Newfoundland, from cheer and culture to winsome Irish dialects (and there was much cheer despite the despondent overtones of this post) I did find myself mentally returning yet again to my teen years spent on the Isle of Man (sandwiched handily between England and Ireland and resembling Newfoundland so closely in a myriad of ways, but especially geographically) and for some reason, thinking specifically about my first transistor radio.

It was Christmas 1975.

My father watched the unwrapping solemnly, telling me that this was a special radio with only a very few stations and since he had already set it to the best one, he strongly hinted that it was not to be changed. This Very Special Station was currently airing the Queen's speech. Afterwards, I learned that I could tuck in to the BBC World report and maybe even catch a few overviews of the Middle East later on.

My dad seemed unusually pleased with himself.

But I was so thrilled to have a radio of my own and felt that some kind of acknowledgment, a rite of passage had been attained.

(Also, I obviously did not believe for a second that this was a ‘Special Radio.’)

As night fell on that Christmas evening, I slipped into bed and like a skilled safe-cracker soon located the scandalous Radio Luxembourg, well known for boldly playing tracks that the BBC (not unlike my father) found offensive and swiftly banned from the airwaves. On Radio "Luxie," one could hear Donna Summer's unedited moans on Love to Love you Baby as well as the full version of anything by the Sex Pistols a few years later - which was vital, cutting-edge listening at the time. I loved the fast throb and rapid fire lyrics that were on offer from New Wave artists like The Boomtown Rats and Nick Lowe. I analyzed lyrics to songs by Bowie and Roxy Music, learning about Guernica, Gitanes and Jean Genet along the way.

It was awkward but exciting listening under the covers with my single-piece-of-popcorn-meets-old-school-hearing-aid firmly in place in order to avoid possible detection. Such innocence, really!

Yet there was something so deliciously artsy about being alone in the dark with this music as though the DJ was literally playing just for me ...

Record needle scritches to a halt.

We’re back home now though and I am clearly not seventeen.

Once again I carefully pack all these memories away again for now (imagine the double snapping sound of a sealed container here) and wonder if this is what happens to everyone in the later stages of one’s life, this constant re-examination, and in some cases, completely unique understanding of events that occurred long ago.

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