When my mother left the man she married we moved out of his house and moved in to a house where the front room was turned in to a pie shop and we lived behind and above the shop, there were two large bedrooms and a small bedroom and a large bathroom upstairs, a big hallway and a small living room, kitchen and larder downstairs, there was also a seller that we never used, by this time I had left school and was working and this house was closer to work so I was very happy, I started sharing the bedroom with my brother as I think the small bedroom was been used by my sister, but when she moved out I moved in.
Working and with money this is where my tech journey starts proper, I don’t remember how or when but I purchased my first tech item, a 12″ portable B/W TV probably from my mothers mail order catalogue.
In the mid 1970s living in this flat with a portable TV I was free to watch my own programmes and when we went on holidays to visit family I would often bring the TV with me, at my grandparents house where we often stayed they had a very large radiogram that I would sit playing their records, I hadn’t found my own taste in music yet and all my grandparents had was mostly Max Bygraves sing along records or the King Singers and such, I would often spend most of my time listening to the radio or retuning it to find obscure radio stations on long wave.
In the house above the Pie shop there was a record player but I don’t remember anything about it or who’s it was, It was about this time I started buying records and tapes and as Star Wars was about to come out two things I remember getting were.
I was collecting anything I came across to do with Star Wars, This Cassette is an abridged version of events depicted in the film using dialogue and sound effects from the original film.
The original 1977 soundtrack by John Williams double LP
I played both these to death, I don’t remember what happed to the cassette but the record stayed with me for years, until that also disappeared along with all my other records.