Voice from the past

[altariel]

"They tell me you haven't been co-operating."
"No? What's the matter? Did I bleed on the wrong bit of floor?"

***

Wow, my Blake's 7 tapes are playing back amazingly. Here's their history. My brother taped them off-air in 1980/1981. He looked after them meticulously, hardly ever watched them, treated them with great care and love, etc. etc.

I inherited them sometime in the late 80s, whereupon I watched them constantly, did that special fannish thing of rewatching over and over the SPECIAL MOMENTS, dragged them up and down the country, let people have the key to my room at college so that they could watch them and rewatch them constantly (doing the SPECIAL MOMENTS thing), then got the tapes (twice), then the DVDs, and left them to languish for a decade in a box under the stairs near a wall which barely kept out the elements. Then I dragged them out today and gaily shoved them in VCR which turned out to have absolutely filthy heads.

And they have repaid me tenderly, with LOYALTY AND LOVE beyond all call of duty. They are like Avon to my Anna. There is a bit of drop-out on 'Rumours of Death' but WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? That too, is a sign of the great love there has long been between us. Bless you, my beloved tapes. You, at least, are not going in the bin. Or, if you do, we'll be going hand-in-hand. Just don't shoot me.

MY GOD, though, you should hear the BBC announcers in 1981! They are unbelievably posh! And see the special Paul Darrow CEEFAX face! I want it on an icon!

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

We were amongst the first people I knew who got a home VCR, in 1980. (I had five teenage/ just post-teenage brothers and sisters, and my dad was sick of all the arguments over what to watch.)

We rented one (far too expensive to buy): the first one was a top-loader with huge levers. The second one had a remote control (gasp!) which had to be connected to the machine by a long cable.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

We rented too; for no increase in fees, we could upgrade to new models every year. And I remember the remote-on-a-cable! I thought that was so cool. I rented when I left home too; the first VCR I owned was a Phillips one that belonged to a flatmate who couldn't keep up the payments. I still have it somewhere. It had some good features too like ejecting tapes and sucking them back in again with the touch of a remote button.

I can't remember when that was though--sometime after you, I'd think. Electronic goods were restricted and very expensive here till the late 80s, and people would go overseas to buy. I think B7 was first shown here in the 80s too, though I can't remember if we recorded it.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

We still rent our TV for exactly that reason: easier to upgrade to something new.

When I went to college (1990), I bought one of those combined TV and video units second-hand: it was unusual to have a telly, never mind a video (hence all those people borrowing my key to watch videos). Being a combo unit, you couldn't watch one channel and tape another, and being second-hand it would occasionally start chewing up tapes (you could save them if you listened for the tell-tale sounds and moved quickly enough). But problems aside it was worth having.