I saw it first. I was stationed at the bay window of our Glasgow tenement flat to watch for the return of my father’s motorbike. The foundry had sent him to England for four days and he’d promised to bring back a big present – and there it was, sticking up through the roof of the sidecar, bulky and mysterious and certainly big.

I called the news to my mother in the kitchen. She came to look, then swung the baby through the air and into her cot. “He got it! He really got it. My washing machine,” she said.

I held the front door wide open while she ran down to help get the awkward parcel up the two flights of stairs. I was excited too. A machine that washed. I imagined little metal arms flashing up and down disposing of dirt and stain in double-quick time. I wondered if it ironed and put the clothes away.

As layers of canvas and paper were peeled off, my mother was still enthusing. “I can do all the children’s things ….and Gran can bring her sheets and blankets …and Jean next door….”

My father looked sheepish, and she stopped with a gasp as the last covering was removed.

The dark wooden box was taller than I was. Set into the top half was a blank greyish square, with two large knobs at the side. The bottom part was a curved section of coloured glass, like a church window, with a Spanish galleon in full sail. I asked if the little ship would go up and down as the water whirled round the washing.

“Don’t be daft. It’s a TV. Television. Moving pictures in your own home. It’s very educational,” replied my father.

He sounded like the man who’d failed to sell us 36 volumes of an encyclopaedia, and my mother was just as impressed.

“Does it do anything useful?” She choked on the words and on her disappointment. I was sent to the toolbox under the sink for a plug and a screwdriver.

“Just wait till you see this” – and, dad played his ace. “We’ll be able to watch the Coronation, not just listen on the wireless.”

The baby gurgled appreciatively, and he directed the rest of his spiel to her, all the time watching my mother’s stiff back at the cooker.

At last the adjusting and twiddling were finished and the switching-on ceremony took place. After struggling through fuzz and snow, a nice picture appeared. A static picture of swans near a river bridge, with background music that was faintly operatic. We all waited. And waited.

“Great. Now let’s stare at my Van Gogh print and Daddy will play his mouth-organ,” my mother bitterly responded.

The newspaper provided the solution. The tea-time news had just finished and the other programmes wouldn’t start until 7.30. This was an interlude card.

Although I boasted about our new TV at class news time, it really wasn’t that exciting. Wordy plays, serious discussions, panel games, all in clipped BBC voices, with frequent apology cards for breakdowns in transmission.

The Children’s programmes hadn’t much appeal. I could never understand why that silly woman let Muffin the Mule clump all over her piano. I would have cut his very obvious strings.

The wireless was much better, with Dick Barton, Paul Temple, Ray ’5 a Laugh, all regular favourites. Sometimes there was a good TV comedy show. The three of us would settle on the couch, dad stretched out with me in the middle and the baby propped up on cushions. My mother’s armchair was turned towards the window as she stubbornly read or sewed.

“Get Mammy a big stone. She’s going down to the Clyde to do her washing.”
father would say

Muttering that the Clyde and a big stone would be a good place for him, she added: “And those girls will grow up with square eyes and they’ll be anaemic and illiterate and brainwashed.”

We still had our quota of fresh air, up early on Sunday mornings in all weather, to go off on the loaded motorbike and sidecar. Whatever lochside or glen we went to, other bikers soon gathered and, after a day’s fishing or climbing, the campfire was for eating, talking and singing.

Most Sundays some friends would come back to our house to see the TV. To be sociable, mother watched a play or variety show.

Neighbours, too, were welcome when they tentatively mentioned a programme noticed in the Radio Times. The whole street crammed in for the Coronation and it became a party, with little attention paid to the tiny figures on the small screen. All the children preferred to play underneath with the sailing ship.

My young uncles, both of them courting, became keen baby-sitters. I was delighted to retreat to the kitchen bed recess with the sweets and comics their girlriends brought, only switching off my torch when I heard my parents’ key.

Later our family had another first. Colour. A friend brought a 12-inch square of tinted perspex, blue at the top, brown in the middle and green at the bottom. It worked a treat on westerns and nature films, but we liked it best on the newscaster’s face. It gave him warpaint suitable to his delivery of all the solemn events in the world.

My mother never did become a TV fan, though in a room and kitchen it was hard for her to avoid it. Years later, in another house, she obtained her heart’s desire. My father worked hard to connect the machine and arranged a demonstration to show that any one of us could now take over the weekly wash.

We left our two-channel interlude-free set to go into the kitchen where he made the guest of honour cut a pink ribbon across the glass front.

Fascinated, we watched linen and woollies perform a rainbow dance as the too-hot water pulled the colour right out of them. It was very educational.

Margaret Gamble