h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a child we didn't have a TV. This was a big thing. It marked us out as different. It meant that my internal perception of the world came from Enid Blyton Children's books and other books mainly written in the 1950s. I knew I didn't live in the 1950s, but I couldn't work out which bits were our family being odd, and which were because we weren't in the 1950s. My internal perception of 'normal' came entirely from 1950s children's books. My parents disliked the world, it was a bad thing, that we should be sheltered from.

I hated that. I love working in A&E because it's so real. You cannot be sheltered from the ways of the world, anything can come through that door, the alcoholic hosing blood, the teenage diabetic who won't take their insulin, the failed suicide attempt, the rich the poor. But you're there.

I wanted to find out about the world, because you can't rear children in a blissful 1950s bubble and not tell them stuff about the world. I remember grabbing every minute of TV I could find, that was a window on the world. I remember watching everything I could find at my grandparents, and then mull each programme over for months.

We didn't buy newspapers either, but our neighbour would give them to us to line the hamster cage with. In the evenings I would quietly read them all. When I was 12 I discovered radio 4. Another part of the world revealed itself. We finally got a TV when I was 13. The next year my parents split up and my remaining parent abandoned such things as discipline or trying to protect us from the world. Suddenly we went from living in a 50s bubble to being allowed to do anything we wanted to do.

Back before the internet not having a TV meant that you were cut off from the world, in a bubble. Now it doesn't matter. We have the internet, and we can be connected to the world anytime we want.

Children with out the internet live in a bubble of unreality. There must still be children out their who live in a bubble. Maybe there are parents that want to keep their children away from the internet. I get the feeling that there are a lot less of them though.

One of the things that brought a tear to my eye when I watched that 'Life in a Day' thing recently was the little shoe-shine boy who worked hard and didn't go to school, but was SO proud of his computer his father had bought becuase he could learn about everything in the world with it.

I too was brought up without a telly, but I think for different reasons. I did have one the two times I lived in shared houses, but now I'm alone I don't have one. There was, though, constant radio on in the house. There was news from RTÉ Radio 1, and panel games (including ones based on topical news) from BBC Radio 4. So we weren't entirely disconnected from the world.

I did read a lot as a child; more than I do now. Now, most of my reading is done at lunchtime. In the evenings, I'm on the computer.

TRiG.

Me too, without a TV I mean. We eventually got one when my brother was six (I was 18 by then). My father gave in and got it because he disappeared at around 4.00 pm every afternoon and we had to call round all the neighbours and his friends to find out whose TV he was sat in front of. Told off he said he had to watch TV to know how to play A Team or Million Dollar Man at school next day. He was right, without TV he couldn't join in. I think that having so many channels, the internet and computer games now probably makes that less the case.

[-B4-]



[B4 was reaared on stern discipline and "The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls" from The University Society Inc.]

B4iwaveawayallthememoriesthataretryingtofloodbackinfromthementionofit

The television was always on at our house. It was background noise and baby sitter.

Looking back, I'm so glad we didn't have huge high definition color televisions back then. Because, what was on the smallish black and white television for a good chunk of most days of my early child hood were live news reports from Vietnam and the unraveling story of Watergate.

My TV time was quite restricted as far as I rmemember. When my parents were away (like shopping or for a walk)I would sneak into the living room and secretly watch TV.

And as for Enid Blyton: I am convinced that never any writer could make canned food sound so delicous.

We had one, but I rarely watched it, I was a and spent most of my time on homework, clarinet-practicing (or other musical rehearsals) or just old-fashioned 'playing out' with the kids in the street.

You still absorb things from it though, you can't escape it. Wimbledon is my main memory of it though - that was my mum's one week in the year where she would choose the goggle-box over the outdoors.

I'm two mindsa bout the having a TV as a kid thing. We didn't have one either for great chunks of my childhood, but I was not very good at playing with other children anyway, so the fact I hadn't watched the right shows was neither here nor there. Not having a TV meant I read voraciously instead, and played elaborate and fantastical games with my sister, which were like three volume epic fantasy novels.

By the time I was 11 I had the reading age of an undergraduate (as officially tested by a concerned educational psychologist) but still played with dolls and lego and couldn't do mental arithmetic of even the most basic kind without cheating and using my fingers or a pencil and paper (in which case it's not mental arithmetic, so, eh). I told him the entire plot of Lord of the Rings followed by the entire plot of Nicholas Nickleby followed by a discussion of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic and why therefore I was a Republican and yes basically talked his ear off.

Would more telly have helped deveolp my social skills better and made me less of a bully target? We shall never know. But it'd've eaten into my reading time, or even made reading less palatable to me, and I'd've never become the walking talking cross between the Encyclopedia Britannica, Google, the National Gallery and the British Museum you all know and *cough* love. Which would have made adolescence easier, no doubt, but adulthood infinitely more boring. And we're adults for a HECK of a lot longer than we're teenagers.

Excuse typos. Have anaesthesia hangover.

I didn't notice them, and by and large I agree with you!

We had a telly. I had a telly in my room from when I was about 9. Did I learn social skills? No, I watched Open University.

I think a television is purely a means to an end. You can use it to learn educational, important stuff. Or you can use it to watch car chases and idiots.

Just because you can watch car chases and then talk about them in school with everyone else doesn't mean you'll fit in. You're either going to or not I think.

I used to think I watched too much TV as a kid.

Then I learned my neice already has her own (bought new) TV in her bedroom.

She's 4.

My cousins also had TVs since they were little. I had one since I was 13. A TV. But no access to any programmes because there was no cable in my room. I used it to play Nintendo. I had 3 games.

I first got a TV in my room for my 16th birthday and shortly afterwards got the living room VCR when my dad got a new one. Being able to watch Doctor Who videos from the comfort of my own bedroom was marvellous (can you that I'm another person who found TV did not aid their social skills one jot?)

Not having a (working) TV in my room didn't help me either. I got access to TV programmes when we moved to our house when I was 16. I still have the same TV set I had when I was 13 by the way.

And the VCR... mum and I bought it secretly some day when dad wasn't there. I can't remember how old I was.