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Weird little hobbies
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Reading time: 1.25 334 words Hey Reader, Do you have any weird little hobbies? Yesterday I was round at my neighbour’s house. They were packing things to take to Ireland to visit family next week, Christmas gifts and whatnot, and they invited me to peep into an old box. Inside was treasure. A radio transmission log book and a stack of QSL cards dating from the 1940s and 50s. Until yesterday, I knew virtually nothing about amateur radio. Now, I’m mildly obsessed. It’s both a relic from 100 years ago and still going strong. The term QSL comes from the international radio code Q and means: “I confirm receipt of your transmission”. A QSL card is a written confirmation that someone has received your radio transmission. Sending them dates back to the 1920s when AM radio broadcasts were still a novelty and radio stations wanted to know how far away they were being received. My neighbour’s collection — which belonged to her father-in-law — is absolutely pristine and I instantly fell in love with it. Each card is meticulously filled out with times, dates, radio frequencies, and often a little handwritten note about what he’d heard, maybe a snippet about what was going on in the world. It’s a little piece of history, a slice of someone’s tiny story which is a piece of a much bigger tale shared by a whole community of beautiful nerds, which in turn is a record of a time when radio was hugely important to communications, to defence, to planning revolutions and raids and adventures. I’m resisting the urge to become a ham radio enthusiast but I’m NOT resisting the urge to find out about those who are because there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of stories buried in those old radio signals and I want to know some of them. Behind one person’s weird little hobby lies a peep into who they are. Yours, too. What’s your story? What do you like to do? What are you secretly interested in? TTFN, Vicky 🫡 p.s. Know someone who might enjoy this email? Please forward it to them and get them to sign up here.
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Learn to Write Like You Mean It
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