Tuesday, October 27, 2009

On old radios

On old radios

"Hey Smudger," I say, "You know all about old radios an' stuff."

"Might do."

"Yeah. Well. I've got this question about old radios."

"Uh-huh."

I've got this really old radio at home, an' I was wondering what the 'AFC' button does."

"AFC?"

"Yeah. AFC."

"That's Automatic Frequency Control, that is. It's for old FM radios to keep 'em on frequency."

"Oh. Right. Y'see – my sister always told me it meant 'Alistair Fuckerface Coleman'."

"Well, yeah. It could mean that an' all."


I done a new blog: Angry people in local newspapers

12 comments:

Pseudonymph said...

We used to have an old JVC video camera...Work with what you've got, Scary. Handy throwback if your sister's name starts with J..

Debster said...

Just fuckface, surely?

Squeakypony said...

Was it a knob?

Scaryduck said...

No , I distinctly remember: "Fuckerface", as in "Press the fuckerface button, fuckerface".

Rowan said...

You sure it was smudger and not biff?

Erin said...

Just Very Courteous is never an option, is it?

isolator42 said...

I've got an enormous....

...old radio with two "APLD" buttons marked "<" & ">".

...definitely:
"Alistair Particularly Likes Donkey-sex"
with the arrows indicating which end of the donkey is desired, of course.

Rik said...

My sister always told me the FM on the radio was short for "Frequency Modulation." Now I know she was lying.

Westengland said...

I strongly recommend that you support the Scaryduck Corporation's new blog on UK local newspaper photojounalism.

Correct me if I'm wrong, SD, but you day job involves
sometimes monitoring reports of journalists around the world being imprisoned, beaten, tortured and murdered just for doing their job, in contrast to their supposed brethren in this country who learn to adopt Orwell's remark about the Well-Trained Dog very quickly - so don't hold back on anything submitted out of misplaced loyalty to your fellow hacks, please.

"Metro" comments - Furst (sorry, She-ducks, I beat you to it).

WrathofDawn said...

I like your sister.

NO! Not THAT way.

Lord Andrew Of Goulding said...

Had to google AFC, doh!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/content/articles/2007/02/28/alistair_coleman_blog_feature.shtml

Keith said...

Ah, being a Radio Amateur I remember the AFC control. The idea was that as you tuned into the edge of a signal the control took over and "pulled" the tuner onto the station and made sure it didn't "drift" off it.

I once changed the wiring over in my Dads wireless so that when he tried to tune into a broadcast the AFC "pushed" it off frequency and it was impossible to listen to anything!

It took him weeks to find out what I had done. He only found out when he took it to the repair shop. He came home and belted me round the ear 'ole. No sense of humour you see!