Radio Ga-Ga

As a child it puzzled me why my father demanded abrupt silence in the living room when the evening news commenced, while he would simultaneously and often severly be the only one to break that same silence commenting the reporting of events on the television set, similar to how many people experience watching sports matches with intermittent states of excitement, disturbence or plain bordom.

I guess me and my sisters would more closely watch my father than the men in grey suits parling about matters of no influence on our toys and homework.

Occassionally I find myself requiring the same from my children today, and I am equipped with an one click instant recording and search and find favorites button on a multi connectable mobile phone.

Europe had delayed access to progress of television broadcasting due to the interference of world war II and as a young boy my father's family will have circled around a hidden radio to take note of the failed operations of Allied forces to cross the Rhine before winter, leaving millions of people cut off from any supplies whatsoever until the following spring.

My father was born in the intial years of the great depression and I do not think he really had a notion of what was happening in the world at a time, or rather how different the general state of the world was only a couple of years before the then economic collapse.  Why should he?

As a student and eventually a professional my father will have seen Europe in apparent endless reconstruction, re-affirming its place in world politics and economics, even consciously abandoning significant industrial manufacturing to the benefit of less developed countries.  My sisters and me knew no better than the next day being always better than the day before.

He was a strong believer of  economic integration, multilateral cutting of red tape and barriers to free trade and movement of commodities and people.  But, he was simultaneously very against any concession of sovereignty or political union. 

I can imagine my father's sharp irony on the wave of declarations and proposals originating from or intermediated by Brussels in the last few years taking up too much antenna time and filling one hole with the other.  I do not think he misses that, but I do miss him.