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IRISH PEOPLE LOVE radio but one man took that to a whole new level.
Pat Herbert has collected vintage radios and gramophones over the pat 60 years and it all started when he couldn’t bear to see the waste created when people threw out 78 RPM records in London in the 50s.
“Vinyl was just coming in in the 50s and people were disposing of their 78 records. Thousands of them would be stacked along the side of the road for the binman.
Where I had come from in the west of Ireland, records were very precious because during the war people didn’t have proper needles to play the records…and to see them being thrown away, I thought it was sacrilege.
“So I started collecting records and then gramophones and radios and it spiraled from there really…some years later I took it up seriously and it took my life in a sense.”
Radioaholic
“When I go to bed at night I could fall asleep listening to the radio and then wake up listening to it again in the morning, radio consumes my life.
I was listening to a programme on the radio the other day where somebody was treated for alcohol addiction and they were treated successfully but I don’t think that there’s many places out there for the radioaholic or whatever you want to call them.
Herbert said:
“I suppose you could say I wasted a lot of my life chasing radios and whatever… my family missing out on me and my missing out on my family, precious hours that I spent collecting and cleaning radios or whatever but I suppose its a personal thing and maybe a selfish thing as well because you’re probably only thinking of yourself and your own needs and that has to come into it as well.”
It kept me sane
The one thing I do know is that I got a great pleasure out of collecting each and every bit of material that’s here…and I know that it’s a certain type of madness or whatever but it kept me sane anyway through the years.
Speaking about his collection, which he opened to the public at the ‘Ye Olde Hurdy Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio’ at the Martello Tower overlooking Howth Harbour, Herbert said:
I would hope that the collection would be kept together, it’s for people to enjoy… It’s not just about me or whatever, it must go on to the next generation.
Herbert’s story as a lifelong collector of vintage radios and gramophones has been made into a short, 10-minute profile film, Hurdy Gurdy Man, by Stuart Duff. The film has been nominated for two awards, one at the Dublin International Short Film and Musical Festival and another at the Underground Cinema Film Festival.
(via Stuart Duff/vimeo)
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Great to see – now lets really tackle packaging waste and force business to make the environmentally correct choice when choosing their packaging – We need to get rid of plastic bottles, plastic wrapping and one off coffee cups and lids
@brian boru:
Bring in another tax…..
@P.J. Nolan: not all taxes are bad – some make sense and others are just greedy – if taxes make it cost effective for a business to do the right thing then it is a good tax in my book. Some are greedy and corrupt like the Irish water plan and need to be fought but smart taxation can be beneficial to society.
All the chocolate bar companies have moved to plastic wrapping because it costs less. Like wise the soft drink companies have moved to plastic bottles because they are prettier. Neither are thinking about the environment and need to be forced to rethink their packaging plans. Taxation is the fastest route to getting these huge companies to change their game plan at the speed we need it to happen.
@brian boru: I would be far more comfortable if chocolate bars once again came in paper and foil. I know they wont recycle the foil but i’m sure it does far less than damage to the environment than plastic.
@Darren Byrne: The plastic gives a longer shelf life so the chocolate companies are using it to give them higher margins at the cost of the environment. Regulatory needs to step in and drive a higher cost to the manufacturer for using the plastic due to the environmental cost. Am sure if the right pressure was applied a solution could be arranged that worked for everyone. The only lever I can think of in this situation is taxation as expecting people to make the change will take generations.
@brian boru: I’m sure it does give longer shelf life, but surely chocolate is a fast-selling item with a high turnover rate? And once bought? I’ve often eaten a square or two and put it away for a week or so, okay, I’m odd, but a lot of people seem to eat bars very quickly once they have some in the house – I’ve even heard of people freezing a bar to keep it for later. I honestly don’t see chocolate as being in any danger of going off before it’s consumed.
It’s fantastic the system works, now let’s solve the plastic bottles ( bottle water ) and the coffee cup problem .
Great and more to be done… especially with plastic
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/plasticpledge/?beta=true
Where are all the reusable items stripped out of the WEEE appliances. Is it Ireland, UK, Europe.
Surely it’s not Africa where all that toxic stuff is released in both the air and the soil/water, by burning all that plastic stuff that covers wires and other components by folks trying to scrape a living together ?
Any answers appreciated. Hope I’m wrong.
Is a dildo a small appliance? Just asking
@Seriously stunned: that all depends on the wife’s choice in style
@Seriously stunned: that all depends on the wife’s choice in style
If domestic appliances were designed and built to last longer than the now average 5 to 10 years lifespan then recycling would be greatly reduced.The average lifespan of some appliances twenty or thirty years ago was averaging ten to twenty years .Most appliances now have built in obsolescence.
Great, but after the specials on Aldi and Lidl this Sunday, we’ll need extra capacity!
You are going to have a great bunch of lads moistening their lips when you talk about that much copper
This just demonstrates the amount of junk we buy throw out and replace. Thats not sustainable
have your say