I grew up with the written word in books and the spoken word on the radio, and had already mastered all twenty-six letters of the alphabet (plus three German umlauts and the "ß") before the world was reduced to just two letters: "TV". Books, the thicker the better, and radios, the older the better: I love them both.
At home we had a radio which was full of valves and housed in a walnut cabinet. It was a piece of furniture and a thing of beauty, and I would spend whole nights sitting in its soft glow to listen to the world outside.
You can't buy a radio like this anymore, but there are some clever retro-look facsimiles, with UBS, CD player, bluetooth, and stereo, that let you step back seventy years to what seem to have been happier times.
My favourite shop ALDI had this little beauty on offer for a mere $129, and it took me only a day - and a little opposition from Padma who wanted to know how many more radios I wanted to collect - to pick one up to put on my bedside table for my nightly dose of Late Night Live.
I'm all tuned in for hours of happy listening!
