on the short wave... on the short wave...

very nicely done my dragon friend... thoughts of cold war years, secrets passed in messages of common broadcasts... spy novels of incredible feats read wide eyes by youth under the covers at night by flashlight...

Metassus touched the nerve and you reacted and very well... I really enjoyed it.

V.

*smiles and blushes, ducking his head at the praise*

I was too young to remember the worst of the Cold War - well, the first one, anyway. :-/ I just remember those notes... the call sign for Radio Moscow, as it turned out. :)

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for the favourite, dear Vixyy. *kisses her cheek gently*

*smiles* Thank you for your comments. I'm glad you liked my story.

The original, Russian, poem isn't mine, I hasten to add; merely the translation into English.

It's beautiful... and something that will haunt /me/ for a while.
You just have a way with words.

*blushes, and gives the wolf a scritch between his shoulder blades*

Thank you. I'm glad you like it. :)

Oh man, I remember staring into the "magic eye" signal strength indicator, straining to catch the BBC way early in the morning, or picking out one of the slower Morse broadcasts, or sometimes a ship at sea. I remember siting with a volume from the Encyclopedia Britannica and the big unabridged Webster's dictionary in my prepubescent lap as I devoured gobs and heaps of text. I remember never fitting in, not into kid groups, not into class, not even into my own skin. I was the odd duck that everyone beat up on, the one it was OK to run off the road when you saw him on his bike or hit in the crotch with a frozen ice-ball in the winter. I remember spending nights whimpering under the covers, planing how I was going to 'show them all' one day (but it never happened). I remember growing up bent, twisted and barely able to cope with what most people consider common social encounters. I remember the salt taste of tears and my own blood from a split lip and how they basically tasted the same, the blood being a little more metallic tasting. Fifty five years later, I can still taste the shame..

*gently pets the elderly rabbit, and hugs*

Children can be so terribly cruel... there's nothing worse than a pack of kids who all went to school together for some years, to pick on the odd one out.

Except teachers... the ones you're supposed to respect, and who are supposed to be there to guide you. But that's another story.

It bites to be different.

Touché, Seht. You gol'durn out-thunk me in this one. :) That's a wonderful recollection and image and it bounces back everything to me -- as does Tabor's mention of the 'magic eye', although I never managed to figure out how it worked.

I love this piece ... as I too would listen to Radio Moscow of an evening, thinking about how big the world was. I swear, if it keeps contracting at the rate it's going, we'll be able to wave at each other over the hedge.

*smiles diffidently and ducks his head a little* I wasn't trying to "out-think" you, Metassus... just put my own remembrances and feelings. It wasn't about one-upmanship or anything such.

I'm glad you like the story, though. I never listened to Radio Moscow - or Mayak as I should say. I just used to listen to those notes coming through the air. I never related them to another station... I was very simple back then. In many ways, I still am. :P

(And never mind just waving over the hedge at each other, we'll be standing in one another's gardens.)

I see your lack of one-updrakeship and raise you this ... http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=vlUYRMCls2s

Ahhhhhh. Bliss.

Very interesting. Curious. I remember Metassus' story after checking the submission page... But this one... I can't really say I got it. Something about... childhood memories. Anyway, enjoyed reading this. The Russian translation is cool.

It's difficult to explain. I was a lonely child, growing up, and I listened to the radio very much, particularly after I'd gone to bed at a (usually) fairly early hour. On the dial, back in those days, the stations were named by their sources, and you could get some stations from quite a way away. (I could even tune into Helsinki, if the conditions were right.)

And I lived in this little town in Nowhereville, in a place where people just seemed to live because it's what they did. It was drab, it was... empty. And these names on the dial, these places, spoke to me. These words that were so different to anything I know, these warm voices coming through the air to my bedroom from... I didn't know where they were, and the spots on the map didn't make it any clearer.

Anyway, back then I used to listen to Radio 4 on 198 long wave. And twice an hour, there'd be these soft drifts of music. Haunting. Strange. Ethereal. As though they were ghosts on the band, floating through. They always came at the same times of the hour, I remember. And I got so as I'd listen out for them. I didn't know what it was, at all... they were just notes.

Time passed and I went to school. I studied Russian. And eventually we heard some folk songs... and there was that music I remembered. It was called "Podmoskovniya vechera" - "Moscow Nights". And I also learned that the first line of the song was used as the call sign for Radio Moscow. So what I'd been listening to for all these years was bleed-through from Radio Moscow on Radio 4.

But as much as that, it's about... times past. Listening for hours. All those words, those places... so far, so very different from anything I'd ever known. Now, of course, it's all just numbers: the magic has gone.

Your reply is a story on its own. Copy/paste it, polish it and submit it. I enjoyed reading it! I have told about my memories in quite a few submission. Well, mostly army stories, but nonetheless.

*grins* But I've already told the story, "In Those Nights Under Moscow Skies"... I'd just be telling the same story again

I'm glad you liked my comment, though.