Planet VinylPretty much everyone who celebrates Christmas will put an angel on the tree. Ever wondered why? I was chatting on the phone to my stepmother yesterday, as I won’t be able to see her for Christmas. At her church she has been part of a group studying angels and how they have been depicted and […]
One of the annoying things about being a parent is that, for years, Santa gets the credit for the best presents at Christmas. Same with Easter. If you grew up in rural Australia, where rabbits are loathed as a destructive environmental pest, letting the praise for the chocolate eggs go to a magical bunny is […]
It is a strange experience to revisit the Grimm’s Tales as an adult. When you hear them as a child, you just go with them. That’s the story: Red Riding Hood, Snow White, many others. The stories become so familiar that you don’t pull apart the elements. This is, perhaps, just as well. These stories […]
On a Cathay Pacific flight bound for Hong Kong, some years ago, I idly flicked through the entertainment channels on the small television in front of me. Among the options was an animated cartoon of Winnie the Pooh, familiar except that Pooh, Piglet and the rest were all speaking Cantonese. Winnie the Pooh, created by […]
A little boy lost! Heroic police! A fruitcake competition! This child-safety record from New Zealand has it all. Music, jokes, and possibly the silliest “stranger danger” song ever performed. One thing you won’t hear is a New Zealand accent. The record is undated, but it comes from a time when anyone seeking to make a […]
There are not many songs about engineers. I don’t mean engineer in the American sense – the guy driving an old steam locomotive, face black with coal dust, desperate to get the Ol’ 97 into Spencer on time. I mean the sort of engineer who sits at a draft board, pencils and protractor at hand, […]
Before podcasts, before CDs, even before cassette tapes, there were read-along records. These were usually 7-inch discs, and they came in a sleeve at the back of a reader. You would read the book, while listening to the record. They always started like this: Often the first side would end like this: Sometimes it was […]
Six degrees of separation between Dr Barnardo and John Travolta. Thomas John Barnardo was an Irish philanthropist. While training as a doctor in London in the 1860s, he became aware of the miserable plight of the many homeless children in the city’s slums. He established the first of “Dr Barnardo’s Homes” for children in that […]
The first sound recording in human history occurred in 1877. Thomas Edison, the irascible genius who also invented the incandescent light-bulb and a host of other new technologies, recorded himself onto sheets of tinfoil. The vibrations in the air from his voice caused a diaphragm to move, activating a stylus which cut into the foil. […]
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