Seeing in the Dark

I have been addicted to the BBC world service ever since my dad taught me how to tune his little shortwave radio. Back in those days things were a little tense in our country and shortwave radios were considered to be some sort of contraband or other. The government then had this thing about controlling the media and allowing only the state broadcaster to air anything. Well, as most of the country asphyxiated in the communication vacuum, my dad snuck in his little radio from an official trip abroad and opened the world to me. We’d spend time patiently turning the little knobs, searching patiently for the frequencies that seemed to always keep changing, our ears tuned to the whining and droning and screeching of foreign stations as we surfed the bandwidths. Then, we’d hear it. A scratchy voice in a faraway place, the familiar plummy tones of newscasters in faraway Bush House, London and after a bit of fiddling with the telescopic aerial, extending it and turning it this way and that, taking up all sorts of awkward positions, we’d have the signal locked in and we’d settle in to listen to the programmes on air.

And what programmes they were; news about exotic lands – nearly all of them in conflict (I liked news of Lebanon, Palestine & Israel, Iran & Iraq the most and……a bit of apartheid South Africa too), Music – British music charts and some classical concerts too, Sport and so on but what we liked most though was hearing news of our country from a different perspective; a change from the self congratulatory tripe that we were force-fed by the state broadcaster that inevitably begun with an update on the movements (including of the bowel) of His Excellency the President – the only thing he excelled at was taking us to the brink.

It kind of felt naughty and nice that my dad took the time to induct me into what I then thought was a world of crime. I’d go to school in the mornings and secretly smile at my ‘felonies’, scorning the mundane lives of the other kids’. I reveled in my rap sheet, savouring how good it felt to be bad.

Well time have changed and so has our country (for the better), one can now have a blog, let alone a shortwave radio and the BBC’s World service (for the worse) there’s not much that’s distinct about it anymore; it’s almost all news now with a sprinkling of sports, documentaries and cultural programming. Still, I tune in fairly frequently if not for the guilty pleasures then in honour of my dad who passed away all too soon. For from time to time on the rare occasion, the world service still can serve up a gem.

I sleep best with my radio on tuned to the world service at low volume. I find the low tones of the presenters comforting and sometimes boring enough to induce sleep. I also think that I can also get myself updated on events around the world subliminally and on the odd occasion, the programming does make its way into my dreams. Anyway, on Sunday morning 4^th November 2007 at 0100 GMT, I found myself awake just in time for the world drama programme and what I heard blew me away.

It was a radio play called “Seeing in the Dark” by a Canadian called Gordon Pengilly and though the story itself was nothing unique, (it had hints of Tarantino’s circular storylines, a protagonist who like Michael Corleone, cannot escape a world of violence, seedy needy sex to spice thing up a bit, a world that’s moved on since he went to prison and so on…..) the writing was absolutely phenomenal. Mr. Pengilly characters slung words together in unhappy harmony to paint virtual canvasses that became masterpieces in my mind. Descriptions so laconic yet overwhelming in colour and texture and atmosphere. I could smell the sweat on the woman on the bus ride from the prison.

I couldn’t sleep afterwards and I listened in again at 0800H GMT for the re-run.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I looked for the script on the internet, just to read it again for myself and I couldn’t find anything other than a blog entry from a gentleman called roGER in Ipswich, UK http://rogers-rants.blogspot.com/ who was experiencing more or less the same thing I was……at the same time.

The world service still does connect people apparently, after all roGER and I did see the same thing……………in the dark.