Our Local Radio Show

“That's nice,” drawled the girl. 

“Twenty guineas,” said her mothers noncommittally. Was it cheap or dear? she wondered. The boy accompanying them chewed on the stem of his pipe and shrugged his shoulders. 

"Don't want a portable," he grunted, "too expensive to run." They were making a tour of our radio exhibition which, in the local Market Hall, was valiantly styling itself 'Radiolympia'. True, it could not hope to compete in size, but the exhibits, nestling coyly amid swathes of green and yellow bunting, left nothing to be desired for luxury, and the audience fell naturally into exactly the same two classes as at Olympia - - the impressed and the unimpressed. 

The girl and her mother were typical examples of the first class, radio being to both an inexplicable mystery, savouring something of magic, but their companion, chewing negligently on a pipe, was a complete example of the second. 

The party drew up in front of a set from which the front had been removed, giving the effect of an opened Egyptian tomb, with its strange collection of gilded phials and jars. Taking refuge in her one safe remark, the girl drawled: 

“That's nice.” 

The mother was braver. 

"It does look complicated," she said, wistfully. 

The young man still chewed. 

“Not a bad set,” he admitted. Its price was probably equal to half his annual income, but his tone was that of one who bought fifty guinea sets for a pastime. The girl plucked up courage and pointed at a thing resembling a scent flagon, and murmured: 

“What's that?"

"Valve," he grunted and, removing the pipe, identified the various contents of the tomb with its stem. 

"Screened grid, of course," he concluded, and the girl with desperate pretence echoed: 

"Of course," 

They passed to the experimental transmitting station and here, after one effort to understand, the girl drew back and gave up the contest. This was a rival with whom no girl could hope to compete. Around it were gathered the young unimpressed in full force, clad in tweeds ani pull-overs, still chewing on their pipes and talking a strange language of their own, while lights glowed and the machine stuttered its messages into the ether. The girl and her mother stared vacantly at the cards pinned round the stand ~cards covered with code signs, with meaningless groups of letters and figures, cars whereon they recognised “recd. your signal" as the one intelligible items. Then they looked at one another and, with one accord turned to the stand along~ side, where a radio~gramophone played muted melodies. 

"That's nice,” said the girl, her eyes brightening, and the mother, her foot tapping te the lilting tune, echoed happily: 

“Yes, that's nice.”