The Hammock Papers: radio

Showing posts with label radio. Show all posts

20 June 2026

Harmony.

If we understood the world, we would realise that there is a logic of harmony underlying its manifold apparent dissonances.

Jean Sibelius

14 November 2025

Began.

On this day in 1922, the British Broadcasting Corporation began its domestic radio service.

If your not listening to Radio 3, you're not fully living.

27 September 2025

Transforming.

A dispatch from the BBC ...

Saturday 27 September 2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railway, when George Stephenson drove Locomotion No. 1 on its inaugural journey from Shildon to Stockton-on-Tees via Darlington, to great fanfare. The 26-mile journey was a landmark moment in public transport and the springboard for the great Victorian age of the railways, transforming how the world traded, travelled, and communicated.

Anchored by resident train enthusiast Petroc Trelawny, Radio 3 is celebrating this historic occasion by travelling from Inverness to London on the Highland and East Coast Main Lines, aboard the Highland Chieftain, one of the longest direct train journeys in the UK.

Over the course of the eight-hour, 581-mile journey, Petroc will provide updates from the train as it speeds south. He’ll be joined by fellow Radio 3 presenters at stations along the route, including Tom Service at Pitlochry, Tom McKinney at Edinburgh Waverley, Elizabeth Alker at Darlington and Georgia Mann at King’s Cross.

08 March 2025

Listen.

We have the guts to play what we want: will you listen?

30 November 2024

Glorious.

Michigan play-by-play announcer, Bob Ufer, prepares the student body for the 1979 Michigan-Ohio game ...

As a kid, growing up in Michigan, I became a Wolverine listening to Ufer's radio call on "The Great Voice of The Great Lakes," WJR. I remember a radio in the kitchen, one in the garage, and one out in the backyard, right next to whatever was being woked on ... those were grand and glorious times.

14 April 2024

Excellent.

An excellent program ...

21 May 2023

Ackroyd.

Don't miss this week's episode of the BBC's Private Passions featuring printmaker Norman Ackroyd.

Norman Ackroyd Unmasked ...

What Do Artists Do All Day: Norman Ackroyd ...

17 May 2023

Nice.

If I had five million pounds I'd start a radio station because something needs to be done. It would be nice to turn on the radio and hear something that didn't make you feel like smashing up the kitchen and strangling the cat.

Joe Strummer

26 December 2022

Nice.

If I had five million pounds I'd start a radio station because something needs to be done. It would be nice to turn on the radio and hear something that didn't make you feel like smashing up the kitchen and strangling the cat.

Joe Strummer

21 August 2021

Nice.

It would be nice to turn on the radio and hear something that didn't make you feel like smashing up the kitchen and strangling the cat.

Joe Strummer

13 June 2020

Dreams.

People don't have radio dreams anymore.

Donna Halper

CONNECT

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL