It’s the final part of the epic trilogy. Perhaps when I die they’ll turn this into a film, like Lord of the Rings. It would be a challenging project to undertake. As long as they keep it true to the blog. I don’t want to be portrayed as a hobbit. Anyway, it’s time for me to actually write about the thing I planned to write about when I started my post two days ago. If you haven’t read
Monday’s and Tuesday’s blog posts, then I recommend that you do. There’s so many things you wouldn’t understand if you just started reading from here. So many thematic elements that are interwoven throughout the texts. There’s a very complex story ark going on. Even Noah would find himself a bit out of his depth. So give it a good read. Take your time to digest the information, and come back when you’ve recovered from the emotional rollercoaster.
So we’ve established that I want to work in radio. I had done since I was really young. I’d been wooed by quality bbC comedy, and creative radio presenters. I’d also been inspired by the production of radio. I wondered about How the sound effects were designed for science fiction radio drama’s such as Doctor Who, and the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. The great thing about radio for me was how you could be transported to another world without any effort on the part of the listener. Television never really did that for me. Obviously being blind I couldn’t engage with the visual aspect of television. But that wasn’t the only reason I loved radio and not tele. The television could only show four channels, and often they didn’t show any content late at night, or the content they did show wasn’t really tailored for a blind person, although I’m sure many of my friends probably appreciated late night channel 4 quite a bit. Televisions were bulky. Radios could be tiny. You could listen to a radio late at night with headphones on under the bed clothes and no one would know. You couldn’t do that with a television. Radios had much more than four channels to offer. You had loads of stations on FM, medium wave, long wave and even shortwave. You couldn’t get any of that on tele. Imagine all the things I discovered about life, all the new worlds that were revealed to me as a ten year old boy just by listening to the radio late at night.
My ears were Opened up to a world of astonishing music thanks to
”BBC Radio 1
with
”John Peel.
Flick the dial and you got satirical comedy (most of which went totally over my head, but I loved it anyway) from
”BBC Radio 4.
Move away from the bBC and you got late night local commercial radio. Nowadays it’s generally all automated music being played out by a computer all night. In those days however you got late night phone ins. And the phone in presenters didn’t have to try and be unbiased like on the BBc. O no! They were opinionated, loud, brass and arrogant, more than happy to be controversial or a complete arsehole to gain listener reaction and ratings. But the programmes made for fascinating listening. Again, my ears were opened to a completely different world. People would talk about the issues of the day, their relationship problems and sex. . Sometimes the calls were funny, sometimes they were sad, and now and again there was the poor old, depressed lady who just wanted her life to end. You would get to know certain characters. If a particular person hadn’t rang in to the show for awhile, people would ring in to ask where he/she was and if anyone had any information. The shortwave frequency boasted every type of radio station from every place on the earth. There were French radio dramas. In fact I remember tuning into a french radio station one night to hear the sound of two women groaning. At first (being younger than ten at the time) I assumed perhaps they were in pain, but as I listened longer I realised that they were very much enjoying themselves. I got my first sex education lesson about lesbianism thanks to French shortwave radio. I was also the only person in my class to be so fluent in French. Sadly, the teacher wasn’t impressed by me knowing the french for dildo. Still, you never know when such information might come in handy. There were also a plethora of right wing Christian radio stations from America. Imagine me as an impressionable pre-teen, channel hopping between French radio dramas about lesbian sex and a gruff American man shouting at me about how I was damned for hell if I didn’t send him money. All this has helped shape the David Eagle you know today … Which explains a lot.
“So what has any of this got to do with why you left
”Southside?”
Patients, I’m getting to that. My point is that the reason I got into radio was so that I could be a part of all this. I wanted to weave myself somewhere into the great tapestry of radio. Does that sound pretentious? Good! So I grew up listening to radio in all it’s forms and this inspired me to present something that maybe would enthral someone else, like I had been enthralled. And that’s what inspired me to work in radio. And that’s what inspired me to write my radio drama all about lesbian sex at just the age of twelve year old. So now we get back to the story of how I tried to get into radio, and how I increasingly became disillusioned as I was turned down from joining radio stations because of my blindness. Radio had always been a source of security, friendship and inspiration to me, but now it was turning ugly. I started to hear more and more presenters who got on my nerves. Cringe-worthy clichéd presenters with their affected radio voices and their generic links. I wanted to do something inspiring and interesting, but they wouldn’t let me in. Then to top it all off, I go into the studio of a local community radio station, only to be told that quality radio wasn’t inspiring witty presenters, astonishing music like what John peel played, nor was it speech based broadcasting were listeners were invited to interact. Apparently real radio was one minute links consisting of time checks, made-up weather and traffic reports, and text messages that were merely invented by the presenter, accompanied by repetitive playlisted pop music. That one station manager with his fake radio voice and his obsession with weather and time checks nearly destroyed my desire for working in radio with his proclamation of “That’s Radio”. But then I found Southside! We got their eventually.
But it’s getting late and I’ve gone on a bit longer than I expected. So I’m going to get to the point tomorrow. Maybe. I’ll definitely be back tomorrow, and I’ll try and get round to explaining why I left Southside. I know that this means I can no longer call this a trilogy, and I may have just sacrificed my chances of this being turned into a film as a result, but never mind.
I’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, why not pour yourself a glass of wine and chill out in front of a shortwave radio set. You never know, you might find a french radio drama containing lesbian sex scenes.
P.S. In case you’re interested, the French for dildo is godemiché, from the ancient Latin word for dildo godemichus, just in case it comes up in a pub quiz or something.
Follow me on social media:
