Resco's Radio & Television Shop

York Avenue, East Cowes, Isle of Wight

March 1955

It was one of those bright crisp Cowes mornings; the wind was cutting and getting up, swirling about the Medina’s estuary. The river swans were enjoying bread thrown to them by a rather plump lady in a bright green coat whilst her tall thin husband lingered behind within a cloud of blue smoke as he attempted to light a cigarette in the chilling gusts . The large overhanging clock at the ticket office clunked loudly as the hour changed, it was now ten o’clock. I stamped my feet to keep warm as the noise of the clanking, grinding floating bridge grew ever closer, moments later, crunching to a standstill it had reached the sloping slipway.

I was on my way back to East Cowes, for the past week or so I had been staying with my Auntie Norma in Gurnard.

The half a crown and the cigarette packet containing two Players Weights which she had handed me before I’d left were still in my pocket together with a packet of Garibaldi biscuits, a gift for my mother and my change of clothes packed neatly away in my brown paper carrier bag. Passing the ‘Umbrella Tree’ at the bottom of York Avenue I noticed a small gathering across the road at the wide entrance frontage of Resco’s Radio and Television shop. The advent of television had been with us for many years, but television sets were still a rare sight indeed and here at the bottom of York Avenue as many as ten had delivered to Resco’s shop. Radio Resco was owned by Mr Harold Bowen and he had set a television up outside on his forecourt and a small crowd gazed on in wonderment as an array of fizzled snowy jagged lines danced across an exceedingly small screen on a television the size of a sideboard.

‘Our John got one for the coronation a couple of years ago, ‘do you remember,’ said the lady, who had been feeding the swans earlier. ‘They watched it up home with the family our Vera went up to see it don’t you remember?’ ‘Lucky they could afford it,’ said her husband, squinting at the silver blizzard on the screen, ‘your Vera said it was a bit blurred’.

Two men were unwinding cable from the shop to the television set, Mr Bowen, his arms on his hips said ‘now wait until you see this, this is a new kind of ariel cable, and pointing up to the roof of his shop, ‘this a much better one than was there before’.

A series of tall steel rods forming an ‘H’ shape was affixed to the side of Mr Bowen’s chimney stack, to my mind, looking very much like the one that had been there for the last couple years. Mr Bowen was explaining to us that the television signal was now coming from a completely different source on the mainland and was a far more powerful and therefore the reception would be significantly improved.

‘Unfortunately, I am unable to demonstrate the new and improved picture quality due to the fact that the television programming ‘start up’ is not until one o’clock., and even then its only likely to be a test card’.

The small group of people that had gathered sighed collectively and moved on, all that is but the plump lady in the bright green coat and her chain-smoking husband.

‘What’s one of these, he said pointing to large television cabinet and one of those fancy radiograms going to cost me a week’? enquired the tall man, coughing through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Although Mr Bowen in that moment of wisping nicotine was partially hidden by smoke, it was as though someone had turned the brightest of spotlights upon Mr Harold Bowen. His eyes opened wide in a joyous twinkle and is round brown face lit up likened to one of his silver dancing television screens. A gold tooth flashed in the bright cold sunshine and sweeping his arm majestically he gestured the couple graciously towards the open entrance of his shop, reminiscent I thought, of the spider ushering flies into his parlour.