Marion's Memories

This week Marion looks back on the Coronation and her first television

On February 4, 1952 the picture on the front page of nearly every newspaper was that of our new Queen being greeted at Heathrow Airport by Winston Churchill and other VIP’s.

The 25 year old Princess Elizabeth, mother of Charles and Anne, had flown out of England, with her husband Phillip, some days previously and at the time of King VI’s death had been staying at Sagana lodge in Nairobi.

An earlier photo of King George had shown him waving goodbye to his beloved eldest daughter.

He was bareheaded and looking quite ill but no one believed he would die quite so soon.

In those days the only news you got was from newspapers, the radio or the cinema.

Most people felt sorry for the new Queen, cutting a sad figure in sombre black. But our sadness soon changed to excitement as the time of the Coronation grew nearer.

No doubt we would see the highlights at the cinema and there would be special souvenir editions in the papers to keep.

But then came the news that the Coronation was to be televised.

For quite a lot of people this provided the impetus to purchase their very first televisions.

None of our family or friends had a TV - as they would later be known.

Naturally there was quite a lot of discussion between my husband and I about our proposed purchase.

But then the decision was made - we would buy our new television and invite our families to watch with us.

Of course, we would have to get up early and cut lots of sandwiches, buy a bottle of sherry for the trifle, and for the toast.

Although various foods were still rationed, the Government kindly gave us extra sugar and fat so I could bake a cake.

Then we came down to earth.

There was a deposit to be paid and since we were renting a semi- basement flat in Bathwell Road, Totterdown (next door to my parents- in-law) we had to ask permission to have an aerial on the owner’s roof.

But our planning had taken far too long and by the time we got to the shop, so many people had the same idea that there was a long waiting list.

Would we get the television in time?

Luckily, yes.

It was installed the night before at about 9pm and on June 2, 1953, we all gathered in our little front room in front of our 9 inch black and white set and felt we were part of history.

How lucky we were.

Needless to say we sat enraptured by the ceremony for about six and a half hours.

Didn’t our Queen look beautiful?

A memory that still makes me smile today is of the rather large and utterly delightful Queen Salote of Tonga beaming away as she got soaked in the drizzle. And when it was all over we still had our television, paid for weekly in the shop.

But as any one who is as old as me, or even a bit younger, will testify, television programmes were a lot different in those days -and, dare I say it, a lot nicer.

There was only BBC, then, of course.

My gran loved our set and would sit happily in front of it even at the intervals, watching the potter’s wheel going round as a pair of hands shaped the clay.

We never did see that pot finished.

Every Sunday night there was a play which would be repeated on Thursdays.

I remember, and I bet thousands of others will too, a gripping serial which all my friends and family came to watch.

It was a science fiction series called Quatermass - all about bushes that devoured unsuspecting people.

One dark night it was so scary that I was afraid to use our outside toilet which was at the end of a dark garden path lined with bushes.

In 1957 we moved to Keynsham and for the first time and, at the expense of another aerial, we were able to get commercial television – TWW.

I can even remember the first adverts -‘Allsorts, Allsorts, Bassets liquorice Allsorts’ and ‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”

And for the first time people who never went to the theatre could enjoy classics such as Wuthering Heights.

Television really did enhance our lives.

Last week’s story brought forth a swift response from Anne, one of my Stockwood readers.

When her boy friend was doing his army service, she says, he always put a acronym on the flap of his airmail letters.

HOLLAND meant “May our love last and never die” and SWALK meant “Sealed with a loving kiss.”

There was also rather a rude one, BURMA, which I won’t go into in a family newspaper.