Afternoon radio delight

Unhappy South London decorator Detes Grodvy tells me his sorrows: (skip to the bold for the useful information)

Dear Aunt Teddy, 

As a young South London decorator, I can't get enough of Radio 4 in the morning. From the moment I start sandpapering to the sound of Andrew Marr's comforting 'plom plom plom I'm in an Oxford college and going on about something plom plom plom', through the fascinating Woman's Hour interviews that brighten my caulking, past the teabreak documentary and noontime earnestness of You and Yours which fill the cracks in my moth and gas-provider knowledge, right through to 1:30 when Martha Kearney bounces out of earshot, all is well with the world and life is as smooth as eggshell. But when she is gone and I start munching on tuna and cucumber a cloud greyer than elephant's breath seems to drift over the airwaves. 

After my lunch hour Radio 4 is as boring as an off-white bedroom. I don't want to be too hard on the quiz shows, Archers repeats, George Galloway vanity slots and half-baked comedies, but they certainly don't go with my wallpaper, so to speak. None of the other channels are any better. The bbc music stations are full of irritating self-important DJs who won't stop telling 13 year olds how important the Kooks are or reminding mid-30s PRs how cool watching Huskadoo used to be. Radio 3 is lovely but doesn't agree with my electric sander. The non-BBC frequencies have too many repeated songs, jingles for no-win-no-fee lawyers and rants about how being nasty to poor people is definitely the best thing to do for my tastes, and playing my own music just doesn't cut it somehow. Sometimes it feels like I spend my afternoons watching paint dry. 

I'm worried that this problem may start to affect my work: the other afternoon, in desperation, I turned to Smooth Radio for half an hour. They repeated so many Rolling Stones songs that now whenever I see a red door I get a subliminal urge to paint it black. It's getting serious and I need your help, otherwise woe betide me! 

Yours,
Detes Grodvy 

P.S. I may not be real.

My Reply:

Dear Detes,
Thanks very much for reading my blog, and thanks doubly for your heartfelt email. I am very sorry to hear about your problem, which I'm afraid is not uncommon: Radio 4 in the afternoon is in fact a pile of balls. I am also a young South London decorator and used to suffer from it dreadfully. Fortunately I have discovered a simple remedy.

In South London if you twist the dial very delicately in the Radio 4 zone, at around 93.8 you will find Vibes FM. All afternoon they play eclectic and possibly new (certainly new to me) but highly chilled out reggae, with few ads and almost no DJing. It's just the right sound to roller ceilings to. At four o'clock, Commander B comes on and plays slightly livelier and more recognisable songs - by Gyptian for example - giving the perfect signal to pick up the tempo and start finishing off and tidying. If you are not in South London, you can always listen online (maybe in the future this will work?) or on your smart phone. Alternatively, magic FM is generally ok. 

You also seem to have a problem with scepticism, a difficulty that is not so easily solved. If you want to be persuaded that at least your hands are real, you might benefit from looking up G.E. Moore's 'proof of an external world', though even this partial cure is said to be unreliable. The Internet has some suggestions that might be helpful, as do Arthur and Ziggy Marley.  

In any case, with luck you will enjoy decorating to the sound of Vibes FM so much that such negative thoughts will simply vanish. 

Yours,

Aunt Teddy