Technological advancements are often the emperor’s new clothes. There is a groundswell of tech opinion at present that saving everything remotely is an improvement on the previous system. Folk like me, dinosaurs, are seen as archaic as we believe that saving work onto flash drives is a better system as, inevitably, when the internet goes down, with the new system, work cannot be accessed. It's ok being told it ‘wont happen often’, but in certain jobs, say, university lecturing, being faced with a room full of 170 eager students each paying a king’s ransom for the privilege of your utterances, treading water and wasting an hour of their lives will not be well received.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on phones which are anything but. We each have mini computers, each strangling the arts of being sociable and conversing as we use them to Google how tall Gary Lineker is, or other such nonsense, and not for what they were originally designed for: to talk to people.

It is with that in mind I would like to start a campaign, which will inevitably fail, to bring back the citizens band (CB) radio. Originally used by truckers and immortalised in American redneck-style films such as ‘Convoy,’ they were really ‘a thing’ in my youth and I would spend many a happy hour sitting with my grandfather in his workshop chatting to randoms from around the world.

He was really into it, and was president of the Hastings CB association, no less. He built his own aerials which loomed high in the sky next to his Anderson shelter-cum-shed in the back garden, as he sat with his set and me resplendent in my ‘you have just eyeballed Dalglish’ badge as we spoke to strangers, and formed relationships, and laughed and sympathised, as we waited for Nana to cook up our tea in the adjoining kitchen.

You never knew what, or who, you were going to find and true friendships were formed. My grandfather made a very good friend on there, a man by the name of Brian, who was blind. Now arguably, in those days as today, there was very little in terms of social support for the blind but when on the CB, with his affliction not evident, he could be himself and meet people he would never have met had he not had the walkie talkie and Uniace 100 rig to hand.

I remember, in the days before seat belts, of Brian and his wife picking me up and dropping me off somewhere in town, a trip I refused to participate in after the first time. His wife had had a stroke and could not move her body, or the steering wheel, left, so, with Brian in the passenger seat, she would shout instructions as he would grab the wheel as she screamed ‘Turn! Turn! Turn! Stop,’ when negotiating a roundabout.

As I veered from one footwell to the other in the back and wished the inventors would get a wriggle on and invent the seatbelt, it was a dangerous time, but gives me a story to tell, and that, is all courtesy of the CB.

The innocence of it was unique. Yes, there would be few idiots on there, however you would just change channel or ignore them and they’d soon go away. With the only medium being voice, there was no way to send unsolicited pictures or hide behind a mask of complete anonymity as a real community was built up with contacts exchanged and relationships borne. It really was, despite the lack of glamour, a real boon to those ageing who found it difficult to get out and socialise as they once would.

But then, for reasons unknown, it was no longer a thing. The fad died down and instead now we see older folk sitting by their windows looking out aimlessly waiting for the postman so they can have some basic level of human contact that day and that should sadden us all.

So, bring it back! I plan to purchase a CRT 2000 and get back into ‘hamming’ for the sake of nostalgia and to connect with those who are otherwise voiceless. No doubt I will be sitting alone for a few months searching out others who have refused to succumb to new, unworkable technology advancements, but I just hope you read this and agree it’s a 10-4, you copy?

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher