Quality on BBC is on the radio. The clock/radio is usually set to go off for 8am, but for some reason today I set it for 2.30 before the afternoon siesta, and was woken to most of Radio 4's New Years Eve Afternoon Play:

Blue Veils and Golden Sands

A dramatised biography of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (now defunct) based around the composer Delia Derbyshire (5 May 1937 - 3 July 2001) who was new to me. This a fascinating life, and a sad end.

Delia wiki

The BBCRW wiki is very good too.


Thanks to this brilliant, simple, script - with the music forming an integral part of explaining who she was - I have come into close contact with someone I would liked to have met. If you wanted to write, starting with a radio play would as good a place as any. BBC Radio can be heard more widely through the internet, including repeats of classic programes such as The Goons. What better way to get an audience for one's work?

In my student days, I lived for part of the time round the corner from the BBCRW Maida Vale site (picture on the Derbyshire link) , which I thought at the time to be a concert venue..

It was a repeat, but unlike TV repeats, where repeat usully means space filler for unimaginative or penny-pinching programme planners, on radio it means quality. For example, Melvin Bragg's "In Our Time" is repeated the same day at 9.30pm - from 9am) for the intellectualy-minded genralists who have to work during the day.

I have seen for the first time in a off-the shelf PC , a radio card. I must remember not to have a TV card!