So here I am watching coverage of the 1979 general election coverage on the BBC Parliament channel (which includes the news read by Richard Baker right at the start, which is worth the price of admission alone), and the complete Eighventiesness of it reminded me of this ghost sign that I noticed in town on Saturday. A more recent shop has closed, removed their signage and uncovered this. Funny how there are a certain subset of high street shops that have now completely disappeared. Did you rent a television? My parents did right up until the beginning of the 1990s. There were all the big hitters here in Newark: Granada (where ours came from. The televisions were always modelled as Granada Finlandia. As the name suggests they were manufactured in Finland, I think possibly by a name that would become ubiquitous in the 90s and 2000s, Nokia), DER and the above mentioned Radio Rentals. I also think that electrical retailers Wigfalls (where you could also buy records) and Rumbelows rented TV sets. We had them all here, long gone now of course. Even Dixons/Currys no longer have a presence in the town centre.
Renting electrical items hasn't gone away though. I was watching television the other night (a Panasonic 32" HD smart TV purchased from, ahem, Sainbury's, if you're interested, most definitely not rented) that the online electrical retailer AO are now offering rentals for low-income households on washing machines with a view to rolling the service out to other electrical goods. As it happens Mrs Ambassador found a receipt yesterday for her grandparents' television which was purchased in 1990 for £300, about the same amount you'd pay today for an equivalent set. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
