´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Devon
´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Devon is our station of the week, although in this part of the county you can be spoiled for choice. We're able to pick up all the stations from South Wales as well as a local commercial station called Lantern -"playing the hits of the eighties, nineties and today!". Lantern has an afternoon quiz called "I'd Rather Be In The Pub" in which callers get to answer a string of questions but are only told how many they got right and not which ones. It can be a very frustrating listen.
Callers to ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Devon tend to sound a little older than the pub-crawl crowd although, on Saturday afternoon, we heard a woman call in to describe her pre-wedding plans for a sophisticated girls' night out of "karaoke and cocktails". Later an elderly man phoned in to describe his teenage grand-daughter as "thirteen going on thirty". Now, to us listening in the car, this sounded like he was talking about her attitude to life, but I'm afraid the presenter got the wrong end of the stick and launched into dodgy discussion about the development of young girls' bodies.
Our favourite listen on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Devon is the mid-morning show presented by Judy Spiers. She seemed to share our own incredulity about the range of music she plays which, in the space of half an hour, included Love Shack, Sailing and The Laughing Policeman. She also has a sidekick called Danny who seems to lose the plot from time to time. At the start of one show she gave him a row for playing with a Gameboy.
It was interesting to hear Judy's take on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland comedy, Still Game, which is on ´óÏó´«Ã½ 2 at the moment. She described it as a |Scottish version of Last of the Summer Wine - "Last of the Summer Whisky, I suppose" and said it was much funnier than the new Steve Coogan comedy.
Of course, we did all of this in-car listening because our plans to take the public footpath to Clovelly were thwarted by, well, the lack of a footpath. To be fair, there was a sigining indicating the direction we should go, but a few yards on there was another sign warning us that there was a bull in the field.
We took the car to Clovelly which meant parking outside a visitor centre which effectively acts as a turnstile into the historic village. It costs four quid a person to go through it and then you walk down the steep, narrow cobbled street, past the childhood home of until you reach a shop selling fresh fish and ice cream.
I'm thinking of doing the same thing at home. Perhaps I can persuade the neighbours to erect a gate at the top of the streeet and then charge people to walk thought it and admire the wondrous array of patio furniture and childrens bicycles in each garden.
Just a thought.
