An elephant in my memory

Today, or maybe yesterday, we saw the 50th anniversary of the first ever telephone trunk call, made by HM our Queen fifty years ago, from Bristol to Edinburgh (031).

The story brought back memories of my childhood, my Grandad a BT engineer, my toybox a stack of old phones, magnets and all. I remember when he retired and he got a choice of gifts. I don't remember the selection but he chose the colour TV. Prior to that we had a black and white and I remember queuing for hours in Glasgow with a shopping trolley load (maybe 2) of Kensitas Club cigarette vouchers to get it.


We collected more vouchers, watched my Granny die of lung cancer and the cricket, with the volume down and the radio on, and some old B&W war films, but, being honest, he had lost the will to live. He always went on about how good his pension was but he only got it for 7 years before he died too, of the same cause.

Such is life, no ?


















cheers

The BBC story on the historic call is here, worth watching if one is into mockery.