Isn’t it funny how things go round and round

LIFE is a circle eh! What’s past is new again! And the many other wise and wistful words of learning from the past.

As a kid of 17, near 30 years ago ( no lightning yet), I had the job of transferring special recordings from America to tape so they could be played on the wonderful wireless.

These were everything from business concepts to sport, health and hazards, and even incredible tales of relatively unknown characters from around the world who had an amazing life, and more often than not, a more interesting death.

They would arrive on disc and I’d spend the mornings listening to every single one of them to make sure they would be OK on air, under pain of instant, if not before, dismissal. No HR department in those days. One show was by Earl Nightingale, an incredible bloke who wrote many outstanding motivational stories, and many ideas on making money, one of which was selling his making money 60 second segments to radio stations all around the world!

He was the one who coined the phrase ‘ Think and grow rich’, also my favourite from all those years ago ‘ The opposite of courage, is not cowardice, its conformity’.

Maybe Earl wore a tropical shirt. Google him, he’s quite enlightening.

Another I’d listen to over and over, to make sure I recorded it correctly, was John Doremus and the Passing Parade, incredible stories of human endeavour and failure, not necessarily well known people, more so the unknown, and they were amazing.

I don’t know how he found the yarns, no google then, my goodness, maybe he read books!

After a few years, these segments went out of favour, and were often laughed at as ridiculously old, and not needed or wanted, and never would be. I’d try to show the new young fellas, but no way would any stories like that be popular to listen too.

But, life is a circle, learn from the past, don’t live in it, listen, because after a while its amazing what can be found.

Now, incredibly popular, brand new, never before attempted, you can listen to money making ideas, unusual life stories, crime serials, sport mysteries, cooking, all that and more on what is known as a Podcast!

And the kids are saying to me, ‘ How good is this, you can listen to all these stories, not just music’, and yes it is good, who’d have thought.

I’m putting my Yongala story on podcast, how about one on James Morrill, and the many other characters of our great history, I love it.

You never know they may even bring back records … oops, hang on, they have!

There was a float during the Water Festival in Ayr, with all records hanging off it for decoration, one of the dads yelled out ‘ Hey Pricey, I bet you know what these are”.

He’s right of course, but I did ask the kids on the float what they were, they said music things. Naturally I added, ‘ How do you play them?’ No answer, then one of the girls said ‘ You put them in a television’. Hey, its close. Happy Days PS How nice was it to see that Liquid Dust.