What Did I Tell You?

Why do we let this creepy company called Google spy on our emails?



By Angela Levin


To many, the colourful home page of Google is the friendly face of the internet. Indeed, the company, which was created 12 years ago by two American PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, has always prided itself on its quirky presentation.


The hallways of the ‘Googleplex’ headquarters in California are stuffed with pianos, lava lamps, games and funky furniture for the enjoyment of staff, its webpage often features specially designed logos for days such as Halloween, Christmas and national festivals and – crucially – Google gives away its software for free.


Add to that its rather hippyish business principles (‘You can make money without doing evil’, ‘You can be serious without a suit’, ‘Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun’), its corporate philanthropy and its clashes with the Chinese government over free speech, and it is easy to see why Google is often regarded as a warm, fluffy ‘good guy’.


Pride: The 'Googleplex' headquarters in California, pictured, are packed with lava lamps, pianos and funky furniture


The only mystery seemed to be how, exactly, it managed to achieve revenues of more than £15 billion last year.


In truth, though, it is a creepy, multi¬national company that spies on us, as I found out a week ago after I foolishly left my laptop in the back of a London taxi.


I made some disconcerting discoveries about Google that have left me deeply unhappy about the business practices of this most apparently ‘cuddly’ of corporate giants.


Like 190 million others, I had signed up for Google’s free service Gmail to write and receive emails.


This was a new development for me, replacing Microsoft Office Outlook, which was largely trouble-free but which I found cumbersome to use away from my home internet connection.


Various friends advised me to switch to Gmail, saying it was easy to use and accessible from anywhere. It was simple to set up an account, and at first I barely noticed the advertisements that pay for the service. There is space for eight adverts down the side of the screen on the Gmail page, plus another across the top.


I was bereft when I lost my laptop and absolutely overjoyed a few days later when the taxi driver emerged from the snowed-in wilds of Essex and returned it to me. I immediately emailed friends with the good news.


But within a second of the email being sent, a column of adverts had appeared down the right hand side of my Gmail screen. The adverts offered me the chance to ‘save hundreds’ on a new PC.


A shiver slid slowly down my spine. The adverts were being specifically targeted at me because of what I had written in a private email to a friend. Though I found the discovery deeply creepy, I carried on using Gmail, noticing all the time that I couldn’t write anything to anyone without Gmail offering me comments, suggestions and temptations.


Electronic spy: Angela Levin found that using Gmail made her a target for adverts based on information in her private emails


This might just be tolerable when the email is innocuous. But it certainly was not when I recently emailed a lawyer about a difficult and sensitive problem and back came a host of offers advertising various lawyers and help with a legal compromise agreement.


I felt as if I were being stalked and the experience left me with a raft of questions. What does Google know about me? How dare they invade my privacy? And is there a hidden agenda?


A honey-voiced Google spokesman was quick to respond to my call and insisted the adverts were generated not by a human being, but by a computer programme that all servers use to scan emails looking for spam and viruses. And that no information was read or sold to advertisers.


That may be true, but Google does use the content of your emails for commercial gain. It scans your words and searches for key words in the same way it does when you use the Google search engine.


When a key word from your email matches a key word in an advert in the Google bank, the relevant adverts electronically line up to hit first your email page and then your pocket.


Advertisers are invited to bid for key words. Popular phrases such as ‘cheap flights’ command vastly more money than, say, ‘arachibutyrophobia’ – the fear of peanut butter sticking to your mouth.


The advertiser is then charged on a cost-per-click basis – the more people who click on the advert and go through to the advertiser’s website, the more they pay. This is how Google makes its £15 billion a year and it is what you are signing up for, however inadvertently, when you click on Google’s terms and conditions.


It doesn’t, of course, explain why they also scan emails that arrive from non-Gmail users.


In theory, there are ways you can fool Google and block the adverts. The robotic searchers seem to have a smidgin of sen¬sitivity, and if you mention suicide, murder, death, 9/11 or some other catastrophe in your email no adverts will appear, but only, it seems, if you type in the word often enough.


An American professor of new media, Joe McKay, discovered that the ads disappear if you mention something tragic at least once every 167 words.


Another twist: The Google street-mapping car gathered personal information


You can get the same effect through the liberal use of vile four-letter words in your email, but this seems more to protect the sensibilities of the advert¬isers, who might not want their products to be associated with such language. In practice, of course, neither course of action is workable. It also helps to carefully ¬balance the pros and cons of using Gmail.


On the one hand it is free, but then so are Hotmail and Yahoo – which both also rely on advertising, but which don’t appear to trawl through your emails and hit you with intrusive ads within milliseconds.


Gmail does have some advantages – it allows several people to have access to documents at the same time.


But given that your messages are stored on vast remote servers that could be vulnerable to hackers, it makes sense for you to delete emails that contain sensitive information, and also to create a separate email address for online shopping, as these are the messages that will draw the most attention for marketing.


And remember that while emails may seem ephemeral, they can be difficult to delete. Once a message is erased, it may take up to 60 days before it disappears from the Google servers - and Google admits that it keeps back-up copies in case of system failure.


Whatever precautions you take, anyone signing up for a Gmail account must trust that Google won’t use the sensitive, revealing information contained in the emails you send and receive for any other purpose.


But can it really be trusted? Consider the Street View debacle. A few years ago, Google offered detailed aerial pictures of the whole world to viewers of its Google Earth service.


Then, at what must have been enormous cost, Google sent out vehicles with specialised equipment across several continents to capture street-level views of both main and side roads in cities, town and villages.


Initially it sounded fun to have the possibility of a virtual tour of any street. And how philanthropic to record our landscape for posterity.


But the next thing we heard was that these vehicles were not just taking pictures, but also searching electronically for wireless networks, logging whether individuals had secure or insecure wi-fi – and gathering personal information.


It was a gross invasion of privacy and rightly caused an uproar. Google quickly apologised, saying it was a mistake. But how could it mistakenly do something that had nothing to do with its stated purpose?


The question remains: if a company can misbehave so badly once, why can’t it happen again?


If Google is so ethical and friendly, then how has it become a sinister multinational giant that spies on the contents of my personal email?


As for me, I am switching back to the less sophisticated Microsoft Office Outlook. I’ve come to believe that free email is worth exactly what you pay for it.

Now I don't feel I was over reacting!

Music Lover?

There is an awful lot of snobbery around music and it pisses me off no end.

Tonight saw the final of the ‘X Factor’ and I was sad to see it end. The two finalists, Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson, put on a great show and the boys from ‘Take That’ looked, as they always do when performing, as if they were having the time of their life. They obviously enjoy performing, Robbie is a great showman (if you ignore his growing tendency to gurn) and Gary Barlow writes great pop songs. What struck me when I saw them perform live (as men not boys) was how humble they are. OK- that was obviously without Robbie as he is unlikely to have even heard of the word 'humble' but they are very talented guys.

Yet no doubt tomorrow the tabloids will be full of stories of back stage squabbles, although if the reaction to Matt’s win from his ‘rivals’ in anything to go by, who all seemed very happy for him, the stories will be largely invented, but controversy sells newspapers and keeps the show in the publics mind in the run up to the Christmas No 1. If this phenomenally successful show is mentioned at all in the broadsheets it will be in the form of lamentations about exploitation of plebs and substandard talent and rage against the machine.

My family, and many others, have had several enjoyable Saturday nights where we either got a takeaway or one of us cooked a nice meal and, with some wine and beers, we gathered together to be entertained. Just like the old days when families gathered to watch 'The Generation Game' or 'Morcombe and Wise'. The XF is the entertainment show of the new century and entertained we certainly were. There was lots of laughter, debate and yes, enjoyment of the music. It is this enjoyment of this type of music that puts my family, and all the other millions of families who tune into the XF, at the bottom of the music appreciation league table.

At the very top of this table is, I suppose, Classical Music. Beethoven, Strauss etc, the very names that strike a cord in some peoples hearts (take Stephen Fry as an example, go on please take him) only serve to bore me. Along with opera, with composers such as Wagner, not to be confused with XF’s Wagner Carrilho, who caused much debate in my house, but the Wagner who composed, among other things, ‘Ride of the Valkaries’.

Stephen Fry, a big fan of Wagner, speaks about his feelings of angst surrounding his love of Wagner’s work, not from an angle of wether or not Wagners music was worthy of such admiration but because Wagner was also greatly admired by Hitler, indeed it is said that Wagner’s music inspired Hitler. I can see his point. I loved 'I Love You Love Me Love' by Gary Glitter but in light of his paedophile tendencies I have been reluctant to listen to him even since the court case and subsequent jail sentence. I can feel you all judging me now, but come on - 'I'm The Leader' would still be an anthem if Glitter had been a normal guy like, eh, like Bill Wyman, and actually married his child bride. But hey, The Rolling Stones were higher up the music league table than The Glitter Band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDIaH3RtYHw

Now I want to be careful about making sweeping generalisations but it can't be helped sometimes. The fact is generally the working classes do not frequent the opera. Even if they liked the music seeing it performed live is very expensive. You would also have to live near a big city to access it I imagine, or have the funds to stay overnight in an hotel. If you were coming from say, Cambridge, to visit the Royal Opera House to see a performance of Carmen for instance you would need at least £100 each. Listening to it at home is obviously an option but opera needs to be played LOUD and you can bet that the council do not receive many complaints from neighbours about Marie Callis belting arias out of next doors flat at 3am.

Most of what we non posh people know of opera and classical music has been as a result of a certain compositions being used in a film soundtrack or on an advert. Take Bachs Air on G String- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiHR11QqIoI&feature=related

I remember being impressed when I found out the name of my grandparents budgie, Tosca, was from an opera. 'What made you name the budgie after an opera?' I asked my Nan. 'What you on about?' she asked. 'Tosca' I said 'it's the name of an opera'. 'No it ain't' she replied 'your grandad named it after a race horse'.

When exposed to classical music some of us just don’t get it. My school took us all to the opera once, at the Royal Opera House. The building was intimidating and we sat through a performance of an opera that I can’t even remember the name of, or who composed it. It was in Italian which didn’t help. Some pheasants had an altercation with some of the aristocracy and someone got stabbed (on the stage you understand, not among us school kids). I remember there was a lot of sobbing, hand wringing and heartbreak. A bit like ‘Blood Brothers’ without the show stopping tunes. Give me ‘Like Marilyn Monroe’ any day. 

Having said all that I remember many years ago watching 'Philadelphia' starring Tom Hanks and it featured several compositions by Mozart in its soundtrack. In the context of the film these were incredibly moving and I was able to appreciate how people were carried away by certain pieces of classical music but I would never actively seek this music out and listen to it.

'Do you like opera?' the dying Tom Hanks character asks Denzil Washingtons character. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b0p9mTJOJI&feature=related I know that Maria Callis can sing, I know Mamma Morta is a big number and this scene is beautifully acted by Hanks and Washington (who remains still for the most part, and silent but manages to convey his thoughts) and I appreciate Hanks character's description of what is happening in the music. but I just don't get it. Therefore I am culturally bereft and only fit for 'popular' music. Ahem, the name for this genre is a bit of a give away don't ya think? Popular means people like it, which for some immediately makes it less valuable. And because for me the ‘Blood Brothers’ triumphs over the opera with a forgettable name I am not a proper music lover. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EWG1SUd1c0


Not only are we judged on the type of music we listen to but it would seem that the musicians themselves have a very clear idea about who should and shouldn't listen to their music. For instance is seems The Smiths are not best pleased that Cameron claims to be a fan.
ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/11/suzanne-moore-morrissey-david-cameron

Moore says 'Call me superficial, call me a snob, call me a bloke – but music matters, and I don't trust people who don't think it's important.' Nor do I love. It is interesting that she says 'call me a bloke' because I was coming to the conclusion that men are the authors of the music league table. When Moore says 'call me a bloke' she is acknowledging that men are serious music aficionados and she is saying that her appreciation of music is as sophisticated as that of a mans. Woman can embrace publicly all genres of music. We girls can party with pop, cavort with country, revel in reggae and even dance round our hand bags to disco and our men will laugh at our little foibles. If we know our 'Dark Side of the Moon' from our 'White Album', if we can identify a blues cord, if we dress up to the nines and sit breathlessly through 'Madame Butterfly', if we keep our love for Abba a dirty little secret, well then we can officially be called Music Lovers. Poor men don't have that luxury. Admit to liking the Carpenters and you will be ostracised. It is much more socially acceptable to admit that you don't like football much and you have never got the hang of the offside rule. Sing along to a bit of Barry Manilow and you won't see your friends for dust. You will become one of those men 'who keep himself to himself'. No matter that you like a bit of ACDC, no matter that you pen a few protest songs before you fall asleep at night - if you like anything that is middle of the road you street cred is worthless. Unless you are gay. Being gay is for some reason the 'get out of jail free' card when it comes to musical tastes. Gay men can embrace their Kylie's and Garland's freely without being judged at all.

For some reason my son is an exception to this rule. NOT you understand that he listens to the Carpenters, although I think he would agree that 'Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft' is a fine example of great voice, naff lyrics. Karen's not the aliens. Nor is he gay. But he is open about his eclectic taste in music and he still has friends.

With your mind you have ability to form


And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm


You close your eyes, you concentrate


Together that's the way


To send the message


We declare world contact day

My son loves music. All good music. He hears a piece of music and if it hits his 'spot' no matter what type of music it is, Rock, Blues, Soul, Country, Heavy Metal, Jazz, yes even classical, he will try to find out more about it, who wrote it, the history behind it and who else has recorded it. Take the other night when I stumbled on Johnny Cash. The next day I asked him if he has listened to any of his music and was surprised when he said yes, named a few tracks and said what he admired about him. This is a boy who grew up listening to Rap and R&B music, who thinks Eminem is on par with Shakespeare in his dexterity with words and who still spends hours in his bedroom listening to Rap, yet the list of music he enjoys grows day by day. He thinks Take That are great, lists Burt Baccarat as one of his favourite composers and loves Leona Lewis. Yet he also loves Nirvana, Santana, Jay Z, Eminem, The Rolling Stones, The Who, BB King and Led Zeppelin to name just a few. We joke that if they bring back 'Name That Tune' he would be a series champion. So is he a music lover?

My daughter on the other hand worries me with her lack of music appreciation. On the league table she is in special needs. There, even I am judging. I try not to critise anyones taste in music. It is a really individual thing - just what it is about a song or a piece of music that makes you sit up and listen, makes you sway, what penetrates your mind and soul is anyones guess. It matters how old you are, what your friends listen to, where you are when you first heard it. It matters if you can hear the instruments, which instuments strike your personal chord and if the lyrics are your thing, are telling your story. 

I felt all flushed with fever, embarassed by the crowd



I felt he'd found my letters and read each one out loud


I prayed that he would finish, but he just kept right on

Strumming my pain with his fingers


Singing my life with his words


Killing me softly with his song


Killing me softly with his song


Telling my whole life with his words


Killing me softly http://www.lyrics007.com/Fugees%20Lyrics/Killing%20Me%20Softly%20With%20His%20Song%20Lyrics.html

What hits the spot in one persons soul might miss the mark completely in someone elses. It's the same with comedy. I once dated a guy who, when I said I liked a certain comedian, snorted and said 'the guys not funny'. I wanted to say 'Well excuse me, thousands disagree with you, nay millions. What you mean is that you don't think he's funny. Which means you are a soulless, humorous prick'. I didn't say any of this of course but it was a nail in the coffin. His taste in music was pretty naff too.

Reflection

This morning I woke up in my bedroom to absolute silence. My bedroom is tucked away from the main road so luckily I am spared the noise of traffic as it drives over the speed bumps and I am buffeted from the sounds of passers by but I am normally woken by the alarm on my phone (a calming gong, in as much as a gong can be calming) which wakes me up without dragging me unceremoniously from my sleep. This morning my gong was silent. Usually before the gong sounds I am often woken by birdsong or by the cat meowing for her breakfast. This morning all the birds must have flown somewhere warmer and the cat was silent too, snuggled up fast asleep with the lazy dog. In the summer, when my windows are open wide I can usually hear the sounds of the street getting ready for a new day. Even at my early hour of rising the sound of distant traffic and the odd aeroplane are reminders that I am not alone in this world. If I am starting work later than usual and have had the chance to stay in bed until around 8 o’clock I hear children on their way to school, cars starting up in the car park and, on Tuesdays, the bleep bleep bleep of the reversing rubbish truck. Yet there is something very special about experiencing silence in a huge city like London. I am sure that non city people mistakenly think that we metropolitans live in a world of noise pollution.

This morning with the double glazed windows shut tightly against the cold winds and sounds of the outside world I could only hear silence.

Intrusive noise must be absolute hell to live with. Having neighbours who blast out music day and night, who slam doors and shout and scream at each other must fray the nerves and make you crave peace and quiet. In fact peace and quiet must suddenly become a luxury that is out of your grasp. Parents with a baby who constantly cries must bury their heads in pillows and sob, desperate for the crying to stop so they can get some sleep. Yesterday I met a parent of a constant crier and she said 'All I want is for her to stop. I can't even think anymore'. This was shortly after I met another parent who lives on the 6th floor of a tower block with a child with Autism. Not only does he demand 24 hour attention (and his means of communication is to bang things) but the bedroom they share is next to the lift shaft and even without his sensory needs the constant noise of the lift disturbs their sleep and, let me tell you Messirs C&C, their happiness quota is pretty low. For both these parents 5 minutes of silence would be golden. Sufferers of Tinnitus too must be an unhappy lot. This is something I have always dreaded happening to me as living with a constant buzz in my head would drive me insane.

Yet knowing all this still the silence this morning worried me. It was so total that I felt scared. Alone. Often I want silence so I can think clearly or even meditate. Sometimes I have to mask the sounds that are out there with other sounds so that I can think, for instance when I am in the car. I do a lot of thinking in the car, not in silence, but by covering up the external sounds by sounds of my own choosing, the music I listen to whenever I have the chance. How lucky am I to have the choice? How stupid am I to fear 5 minutes of complete silence? I should thank my lucky stars.

The opportunity to spend some of our day in silent reflection is our right. Silence allows us to reflect. Yet most of us fear silence, even gaps in conversation are something to be filled, usually with careless, meaningless words. Reflection is a something that most of us don’t do enough and it is a priceless tool. However to do it justice it is best carried out in silence. With the windows closed.


Be Still – For Now


If we lived in a world of silence


Exactly what would we hear?


Just our beating heart and gentle pulse?


Or would our thoughts drive us insane with their sudden


Clarity?

Perhaps our touch would become too intense


With a sensitivity that is impossible to manage


As we become familiar with the person within?


Or would we crave an internal intimacy that


Engulfs?


Would we would crave for sounds that mask


The sometimes scary space that silence has created?


Or would we start to hear the things that matter


Would we finally understand that we sometimes need to be


Still?

'I Know A Song'

'The Defamation of Strickland Banks' is still in my CD player (this is a record, excuse the pun, or is it a spoonerism?) and for weeks I have been wondering which song it is he knows:
http://www.songlyrics.com/plan-b/i-know-a-song-lyrics/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkjemF-Fbg
Assuming it isn't one of Bank's own compositions (and, if it is, it has to be 'Love Goes Down') I've been toying with the following possibilities:

'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face'

It is little wonder that The X Factor's Matt Cardle's version of 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face'  has had so many hits on YouTube - I defy any woman to listen to this and not wish he was singing it for her. Not because he is cute - but because it is a powerful song. I almost cry when Leona Lewis (Ex X Factor) belts it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-5M93tovEs&feature=related
Who would have thought the song was written by a political folk singer?  It has been covered by scores of people including Bob Monkhouse. Fortunately I have been unable to find this version so you have been spared the experience of hearing Bob murder this love song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-5M93tovEs&feature=related
But I did stumble on a version by Johnny Cash and, like Matts version, it hits the spot. That place at the bottom of your spine, which when hit, stops your heart beating for a nano second and transports you to a place and time when you loved.
I also love that it says 'kissed your mouth'. Sounds much more passionate and raw than 'kissed your lips'. And it is a song that oozes passion.
The first time ever I kissed your mouth
And felt your heart beat close to mine
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love
That was there at my command.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdSIlVZhsDw&feature=related
Beautiful.
http://www.romantic-lyrics.com/lf34.shtml
Or then again the song he knows might be:

'Hurt'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go&feature=related
http://www.lyrics007.com/Johnny%20Cash%20Lyrics/Hurt%20Lyrics.html
Too depressing? Maybe. But The Man In Black has class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash
Yet it may be a beautiful love song written by Bob Dylan and sung here by another X Factor finalist- Rebecca Ferguson.
'Make You Feel My Love'

http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/make-you-feel-my-love
Her nerves get the better of her in this performance but all is forgiven. She has talent if not the 'X Factor'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFAZ6TvK-3c&feature=channel

Music Lover

There was a point in my teens when I often used to wonder what I would choose if faced with the choice of being deaf or blind. Both horrific options. But every time I decided that I could live without sight but being deaf would be impossible to cope with because listening to music was my life.
In the 1960s we had a radiogram. I loved that radiogram. It was big, wooden and shiny with sliding doors, large chunky knobs and a big speaker. Behind one sliding door was the record player and behind the other a place to keep all your records. In the centre was the radio with its dial and buttons. This whole thing took up half the living room, much like today’s flat screen TVs, but unlike the flat screens the radiogram were seductive. 

Once, when left at home alone, I varnished that radiogram and everything else in the room that looked vaguely as if it was made from wood. Including the clock on the mantelpiece which had been a wedding present to my parents. My mum arrived home just as I was making a start on the wood panel effect wallpaper that lined one wall of the room and she, not surprisingly, wasn’t best pleased. It was a replay of the time me and my cousins had shampooed my aunts carpets with Crazy Foam. Sometimes adults are just so ungrateful.

Someone I knew once used to collect radiograms, which at the time I thought was rather odd, because as a collectable it not easily accommodated. A collection of three would be take up a lot of room and any more than that would need a room of their own. En masse it would be difficult to appreciate their purpose and attractiveness. Looking at the various images of radiograms on the ‘net reminds me just how beautiful some of them are. Some had televisions and drink cabinets incorporated. So practical. Flat screen TVs are so boring in comparison.
Ours was beautiful to me and I loved to twiddle the radio dial, turn the knob from mono to phono and sort through the various LPs stacked in the side compartment, all of which belonged to my mum. I have never known my dad to listen to music.

LPs of Matt Monroe, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, The Bachelors, and her all time favourite – Joe Dolan, lived in that compartment. Whenever 'Make Me an Island' came on the radio my mum would stop what she was doing and sing along and when she had a few drinks and got maudlin this was one of her favourites. The Stones, The Beatles, The Who, they all passed my mum by and, until Tina Turner went solo, her tastes were firmly of the crooner type (with the exception of Bassey and Springfield as my mum liked to belt out songs of lost love after a few drinks).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61J8b8NwSDI
Before I discovered David Bowie and added ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ to the LP collection the only LP that belonged to me was ‘Half a Sixpence’. I was not a fan of Tommy Steele, or indeed musicals in particular, but this was a gift from my dad and I played it non stop and loved to sing along. Fortunately I was left home alone a lot from an early age and could indulge in a melody of Distant Drums, I Who Have Nothing, Delilah and Crash, Bang, Wallop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Sixpence
Before the Bowie moment I dallied with others. For some strange reason I was obsessed with Kenny Roger's ‘Ruby’, Middle of the Road's ‘Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep Cheep and The Archie's ‘Sugar Sugar’. In my defence I was only about 9. Fortunately as I entered my teens I had an epiphany moment when I saw Bowie sing ‘Starman’ on Top of The Pops and was thus saved from a lifetime in a music wilderness.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muMcWMKPEWQ
Even though my love for Bowie was deep and pure I was still seduced by other types of music and embraced wholeheartedly Glam Rock, Punk, Soul, The Sound of Philadelphia, Motown and Soul music. The highlight of my week was Sunday evening listening to the Top Twenty on the radio. By this time the radiogram had gone to radiogram heaven and I listened to it on my little ITT transistor radio. This and a ITT radio cassette were another present from my dad and each week I would hover over the radio, trying to maintain absolute silence as I held the microphone to the radios speaker and try to anticipate when the DJ would start to speak so that I could press the ‘off’ switch. Both these ITT devices had a wooden effect but I resisted the urge to varnish them. They were my pride and joy.

I also had a portable record player and would spend hours in my room listening to cracking 45s or bad recordings of my favourite songs. For the rest of my teenage years listening to music replaced reading of books but both offered an escape from my world, at least for a few hours.

My husband-to-be smashed the radio, cassette player and record player during an argument, along with many of my records. In reality, one one level at least, I was both deaf and blind.