Where the Action Is
Where the Action Is |
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Adrian Leslie stood on the catwalk between the studio and the tower used for keeping the collection of records and other equipment needed to run the radio station, such as tapes. He had been collecting records for his show; he was on the air in half an hour. Now he stood for a moment gazing out to sea. Dusk was falling now, a single star shone low on the horizon. The sea was a darkish blue, calm, and the sky was almost the same colour, so much so it was impossible to distinguish between sea and sky at the horizon. Over to the west, the sun had sunk behind the hills, far away on the mainland, and a red glow could be seen, that filled the sky, and then grew les, a kind of rosy mistiness, with a dreamlike quality to it.
Adrian turned and walked back to the main tower, which housed the studios, the transmitters and generators, the radio station part of the fort. He sent into the studio. Alan Love, the youngest of the nine disc jockeys who worked for Radio Madeleine, was on the air. As Adrian went in, Alan had just put on a record. He switched off the microphone, and turned round. He was slim, tallish, with brown hair and eyes, only nineteen, but professional in the way he spoke to the ten million or so listeners, and not at all nervous.
“Hi, Adrian,” said Alan, “going to get ready for your show?”
“Yes, but don’t let me disturb you.”
Alan turned round and slotted a tape into a machine. When the record stopped, he pressed a button, and the tape played. It was a commercial – commercials were the livelihood of Radio Madeleine. Meanwhile, Adrian busied himself sorting tapes and records, and scripts fo commercials, news and weather. Adrian was slender, not very tall, with black hair and good-natured blue eyes that seemed to laugh all the time. He was good-looking, gently and kindly to everyone, and fond of animals. He was twenty-four. He was one of the original disc jockeys with the station, and he was made for his job, he could do nothing else, even if he had to. Even his name meant ‘man of the sea coast from the grey fort’.
Radio Madeleine had started over a year and a half ago, on the old fort left over from the War - when it had had big guns to thin out the Nazi bombers headed for London. In fact it was a string of seven towers, joined to the large central tower by catwalks, covered in with bars and wires, to stop people falling off. The forts were supported on legs, many feet above the North Sea, and the people who worked on the forts had to have a head for heights. The name Madeleine had been given to the station because of the fact that it consisted of towers; the name Madeleine meant ‘tower of strength’. There were nine disc jockeys who worked in shifts, six on the forts at a time. The boys who were on the shore worked at shows and special appearances, for which they earned money. It was a hard job, for the forts would shake in violent winter storms, and people had to wear oilskins to cross from one tower to another.
The nine disc jockeys were: James Dennis, the eldest and chief disc jockey, fair-haried and tall, authoritative, but not hard. He was twenty-nine; Angus McDuncan, a twenty-two year old Scot, with a pleasant accent, he had brown hair, blue eys and a beard. Then there was Norman Clive, a twenty-four year old Australian, from Sydney, he was tall and fair, with green eyes; Dirk Harvey, from Los Angeles, with brown hair and eyes. Noel Llewellyn was the Welsh member of the team, dark-haried and dark-eted, with a pleasant soft voice with only a trace of accent in it. Then there was Yale Ross, black-haired with brown eyes, and lastly the Irishman, Sean Perry, with dark brown hair and blue eyes, and of course, Alan Love and Adrian Leslie.
Also on the fort there were engineers, a crew of three and a captain, who ran both sides of things, the living side and the radio side of the fort, also there was a cook and a steward.
These had two weeks at a time on the towers and a week on-shore. They had three weeks holiday a year.
To get onto the fort, there was a timber hoist, which raised people and supplies to the deck of the fort. People from the fort left and went onto the fort by a small tender, which docked at a pier (called Felix Pier) in St Felix Bay.
Radio Madeleine had been considered the most popular radio station in the area; there was another off-shore station about eight miles down the costs, based on a ship Its name was Radio Electra, 230 metres. Madeleine broadcast on a wavelength of 288 metres.
