TV FINDS ITS LEVEL

15/11/84

Sometimes, talking to children, we say, 'Oh yes, in Skara Brae they had stone cups, and stone spoons, and stone telephones and stone television sets.' ...

Almost as primitive now as stone TV sets are the black-and-white sets that first reached Orkney in the early fifties (though all that could be seen, to begin with, were drifts of snowflakes across the screen).

But TV quickly caught on. People began to speak about such things as 'That Was the Week That Was' and the serialisation of The Forsyte Saga. Names like Gilbert Harding and Robin Day were as familiar as neighbours'. It exerted such compulsion that families stayed indoors, night after night, clustered about the grey shadows on the screen. If neighbours called, they no longer got the kind traditional Orkney welcome. (In plenty of houses, I'm sure they did, still - but the social climate had changed a great deal.)

The twice-a-week Stromness cinema closed down - and that was a real breach in the social fabric of the town. There was something delightful about the coming together, every Thursday and Saturday evening, of so many townsfolk. The tree of drama that had flourished so well in Orkney for a generation all but withered and perished. And no doubt other social get-togethers were drastically thinned out. Were we on the brink of a social revolution?

No, we were not, as things turned out.

Folk discovered that they could take so much television, and no more. They began to miss the fruitful relationships, the comings and goings, the visits, that had been so much a pattern of our lives; and having lasted maybe for thousands of years, were deeply ingrained.

So TV found its level, and has stayed there, though in the meantime black-and-white sets have been relegated to the junk heap, and the corner of every living-room in the western world brims with moving colours.

In all of them that is, except this house, where a Stone Age TV hung on doggedly till last weekend.