Tea and Radio

Radio , tea and I have a long time special relationship.

 It began with my grandmother who loved radio and listened to it daily.

This mornings cup of tea

She took care of me when I was very little and every morning the radio went on and we had our tea (Cambric in my case. Cambric tea is  a cup of warm milk with a tea bag passing by it slightly) and we would sit together over breakfast and enjoy.  I was a toddler but it meant the world to me and I adored our tea time in the morning and later in the afternoon.

Afternoon tea was very special as sometimes she allowed me a saccharine tablet that would  sparkle around the tea like a busy bee as it dissolved.   I loved that but it was a rare treat!     Most of the time I got honey or Demerara sugar. 

Again the radio was on. Soft old music or radio programs and shows which were on the radio until the 1980's in many markets.


 As a teen a friend and I found an old standing console radio from the 1930s in their family attic.

It was almost 4 feet tall and wide in a beautiful oak cabinet.

We were able to get it working again after finding huge old tubes at the TV-Radio repair shop in town.  He had to blow the dust off them but he had them!

We replaced the old tubes, plugged the old material covered cord into the wall outlet  and it hummed into action.

The lights in the dial began to glow warmly and the AM/short wave radio tubes got warmer and ready for action..

We tuned around the dial until we found a station playing soft old standards. I remember how thrilled we were by it and the connection to the past.

We even caught some short wave transmissions.

We were hooked and spent late afternoons after school in that attic listening to that wonderful radio and sipping cups of tea to keep warm in the attic.

We pulled out an old hand crocheted rag rug to sit on and it was , to us, a cozy little hideaway where we passed a lot of happy early evenings after homework.

Later when I was in my 20's  and married, I bought a small replica of a console. It played vinyl records, and was also a radio.  It stood about 38 inches tall and had a little glowing dial.  I thought it was wonderful.
 It was my good fortune that old time radio was making a comeback on radio stations and old radio programs were being reproduced for sale.
Someone destroyed that radio and it was sad.

But I got another one when my daughter, who inherited my love for old records,radios and music got herself a different model and I took this old oak reproduction from her.
Here it sits on a chair waiting to be put in place.
I have been rearranging books after buying an Ikea Kallax what is 6 ft tall and wide. It doesn't begin to hold all my books, but its a start.

You can hear radio with me right here on my blog. The player is at the bottom of the blog :).
The photos are taken with my phone and are pretty blurry I know..sorry.