The evolution of the walkman and the return of the BGW

Many many years ago I fondly remember receiving my first cassette walkman. I must only have been eight or nine and I marvelled in my new found world of musical entertainment. It wasn’t really a walkman, rather a version made by Boots. I clearly remember that it was quite bulky, had buttons for play, fast forward and stop. Once you’d listened to one side of your cassette you had to take it out and turn it round. It also had headphones with orange foam on them.

Over time I progressed to a much smaller cassette walkman, then one that you didn’t need to take the cassette out when the side you were listening to was finished as well as having a reverse button!

I marvelled at my first CD walkman, yet now laugh at the sheer bulk of it along with the huge quantity of batteries that it consumed.

It might therefore come as a bit of a surprise to hear that the first MP3 player I got was a hand me down, from of all people - my father, about 8 months ago. He had bought an iPod and therefore his Creative Micro was no longer needed. The one time an MP3 player came in handy was when out walking the dog, without some music my head just churns and my mind goes off on incredible tangents. I also used the albums that I listened to as a guide for the distance I was walking. For example, Ryan Adams - Gold, is a 2 1/2 mile walk. A few weeks ago the inherited MP3 player lost its ability to hold a battery charge, which rendered it pretty much unusable. However I had a fair chunk of Amazon vouchers and found that they had some great deals on MP3 players.

On Monday I pressed the button and ordered this. An 8GB player is more than enough for me and it will force me to change my music around every couple of weeks. Ironically, it was cheaper to get it on next day delivery rather than normal first class post. I also bought a batch of CD’s to rip for use on the new player at the same time. After a quick charge and some time spent loading songs on during the day, it was suddenly walk time on Tuesday evening.

We walked and walked, then walked some more and then walked a little more. After about 6 miles the dog stopped and looked at me with a look that told me she’d really had enough, so we headed back home. She promptly flomped down on the sofa and fell asleep, snoring loudly for several hours.

The big giant walk (BGW) is back. The dog is now dead tired at night and I’m enjoying being out for long music filled walks once more. Every time I change the music I’m going to pick an obscure album that I haven’t listened to in a long time and listen to it, I have some CD’s that I haven’t listened to for ten years I’d say.