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What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV - Literature - Nairaland

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What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 8:47pm On Jan 03, 2021
This was our Netflix back in the days...

167 Likes 17 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by uboma(m): 8:49pm On Jan 03, 2021
The good old days, I still miss em...

65 Likes 4 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Fahdiga(m): 8:51pm On Jan 03, 2021
The good old days. not now that vagina people are talking to men anyhow

148 Likes 9 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Khalesie: 8:59pm On Jan 03, 2021
Ishilove:
This was our Netflix back in the days...
I luv u ishi

10 Likes

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 9:24pm On Jan 03, 2021
ekesoft:
THE GOOD OLD DAY ,way boiz they play konkoli football


THAT'S BY THE WAY SHA


ALL 3D CREATOR SHOULD PLEASE CHECK THE THREAD BELOW
This so rude. How is it by the way? You comment on the Op of a thread and still say "that's by the way" and redirect readers to another thread?

Please don't be unfortunate.

32 Likes 2 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 9:24pm On Jan 03, 2021
Khalesie:
I luv u ishi
Thanks dear.

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by ACRI: 9:27pm On Jan 03, 2021
Sweet memories
I love the passport of mallam ilia
An African night entertainment
Once upon a village too

And these ones(foreign)
The black arrow
Lorna Doone

17 Likes 3 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by ekesoft(m): 9:34pm On Jan 03, 2021
Ishilove:

This so rude. How is it by the way? You comment on the Op of a thread and still say "that's by the way" and redirect readers to another thread?

Please don't be unfortunate.



so sowie , wasn't my intention to get on your nerves ...

9 Likes 1 Share

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by naptu2: 9:50pm On Jan 03, 2021
naptu2:


Boring ke? What does boring mean grin I grew up in heaven, so I didn't know the meaning of boring (I always joke that I've been to heaven, hell and earth in my lifetime).

There were so many things to do and not enough time in which to do them.

Video games

You could play video games.

We had a Binatone TV Master in the 1970s.

All the games were pre-installed. I particularly remember the tennis game.
www.nairaland.com/attachments/1714590_1pd2909976_jpgbace0e56344955b32fb8a8c3065acd57

We had an Atari 2600 in the 1980s.


www.nairaland.com/attachments/1714599_109296319801985theconsolewarsbeginjpg09eb13aa605f4d137c1e47805a91c2ac_jpgcd34801d9c765e8e7c1bc35522156b9d

It had lots of games which you bought separately. The games came in cartridges.

The most popular game was Pac Man


My second favourite game was Spiderman




My favourite game was Maze Craze



I never really understood this game. Superman






You could watch TV

TV stations began transmitting at 5pm and shut down around midnight. There was no 70% rule at that time, so they showed a balanced mix of foreign and Nigerian programmes. I knew the tv schedule off heart. The tv became my clock.


Then came LWT. There was a battle for supremacy between NTA2 Channel 5 and Lagos Television and sometime between 1980-1982 LTV started Lagos Weekend Television (LWT).

LWT began at 7pm every Friday and ran (non-stop) until 7am on Monday. They showed the best movies and series all through. Series like Incredible Hulk, Invisible Man, The Man From Atlantis, Charlie's Angels, Wonder Woman, Dan August, The Avengers (John Steed and Emma Peal), etc.


There was a boy in my house. At around 11pm, the adults would make him go and sleep because it was past his bed time. Then, at around 1am, I would hear noise in the kitchen. This guy would be in the kitchen cooking all kinds of food. Then he would go to the parlour and sit in front of the tv with his meal. He would lower the volume so that he would be able to hear what's being said, but none of the people sleeping in the house would be able to hear it. Then at around 5am, he would sneak back into his room and sleep.

So I would wait until it's around 1:30 and then join him in the parlour to partake in his meal grin

Unfortunately the LWT studios burnt down in 1985 (or '86) and that was the end of their marathon transmission.

This is Chariots of Fire by Ernie Watts. It was the signature tune of LWT. It used to make a lot of people happy on Friday nights.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIKJG3uUWQ





You could go to the video club and rent movies, tv shows, sports, etc or borrow from friends.

You could borrow video cassettes from friends or rent them from video clubs.

There were hip hop themed movies like Break Dance The Movie (Ozone and Turbo), Fame (the pilot was a movie, then came the tv series), etc.

There were movies and series that were adapted from classic books like The Other Side Of Midnight, Kane And Abel, Hollywood Wives, etc. These usually require TDB (Till Day Break). There was a day that we started watching movies at 7pm, took a short break to watch the news headlines at 9pm, then continued watching till 6am (I only realised what time it was when my mum called me to lock the door for her).

We were one of the first people in the neighbourhood to have a VCR (this was the late '70s) so neighbours often came over to watch with us.

Of course, in the 1980s there were video clubs like Video Mart, Cosmo, Videoscope, Glowe, etc and in the '90s there was Mega Movies.




Sports

I played football, basketball, tennis, rounders, baseball, cricket and table tennis. I watched, but did not play, rugby.




You could go to Ikoyi Club to hang out.




You could read books.

I had a gigantic library. There were crime novels, story books, major literary works, everything from James Hardly Chase, Jackie Collins, Jeffrey Archer and those kind of authors, to Pacesetter novels, to works by Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, etc, to the African Writers Series, to story books by Enid Blyton (Famous Five, Secret Seven, Five Find-Outers, Mallory Towers), etc.




You could go out and play.

I grew up in a multi-national environment and the kids taught each other various games from their countries. We had buried treasure, we had our own makeshift kitchen (where kids would bring recipes from their countries. That's where I first ate curry rice), etc.

In fact, there were so many things to do, that I could spend the whole day telling you about them.

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by joseph1832(m): 11:36pm On Jan 03, 2021
Men what happened? Such memories... cry

1 Like

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 11:59pm On Jan 03, 2021
naptu2:

This was when dinosaurs walked the earth.

9 Likes 1 Share

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 12:03am On Jan 04, 2021
joseph1832:
Men what happened? Such memories... cry
What happened? Technological advancement happened, that's what.

2 Likes

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by joseph1832(m): 12:07am On Jan 04, 2021
Ishilove:

What happened? Technological advancement happened, that's what.
at what cost, at what cost ishi?
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by nihilistjnr: 12:11am On Jan 04, 2021
Ishilove:
This was our Netflix back in the days...

Damn...I used to look forward to the reading list ahead of each school year. I would finish all the literature books in the summer before 1st term resumption.

You're missing a couple of the top including 'Thr bottled Leopard', 'Thr trials of brother Jero', and 'Cry the beloved country'

Obviously all the chinua achebe and Cyprian ekwensi books as well.

39 Likes 6 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 12:15am On Jan 04, 2021
nihilistjnr:


Damn...I used to look forward to the reading list ahead of each school year. I would finish all the literature books in the summer before 1st term resumption.

You're missing a couple of the top including 'Thr bottled Leopard', 'Thr trials of brother Jero', and 'Cry the beloved country'

Obviously all the chinua achebe and Cyprian ekwensi books as well.
I don't have a meme generator else I would have added the ones you mentioned. I read Bottled Leopard so many times the book eventually fell apart in my hands grin

7 Likes 1 Share

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 12:16am On Jan 04, 2021
joseph1832:
at what cost, at what cost ishi?
At the cost of the simple pleasures of life, honey.

3 Likes

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by nihilistjnr: 12:18am On Jan 04, 2021
Ishilove:

I don't have a meme generator else I would have added the ones you mentioned. I read Bottled Leopard so many times the book eventually fell apart in my hands grin

I think there might have been an issue with quality of the binding of that book, cos the spine of mine split too.

4 Likes 1 Share

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by nihilistjnr: 12:21am On Jan 04, 2021
Ishilove:

At the cost of the simple pleasures of life, honey.

I don't think life changed like that to be honest.

Naptu's description of life in the 70s and 80s is pretty consistent with my childhood experiences in the 90s, except my neighborhood wasn't as nice or diverse

6 Likes 2 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by GAZZUZZ(m): 3:26am On Jan 04, 2021
Ishilove:

This so rude. How is it by the way? You comment on the Op of a thread and still say "that's by the way" and redirect readers to another thread?

Please don't be unfortunate .

2021, still so violent cheesy

16 Likes 3 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by olufeyikemi90789: 6:23am On Jan 04, 2021
This was our Netflix back in the days...

2 Likes 1 Share

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by stuff46(m): 6:47am On Jan 04, 2021
tongue
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by budaatum: 3:37pm On Jan 04, 2021
nihilistjnr:


I don't think life changed like that to be honest.

Naptu's description of life in the 70s and 80s is pretty consistent with my childhood experiences in the 90s, except my neighborhood wasn't as nice or diverse.
Naptu's description of life in the 70s and 80s is very not pretty consistent with the childhood of many. And no, nihili, I am not accusing you in any way of saying it was because, you didn't.

In the 70s I had to lug 3 buckets of water up to the third floor where we lived and when the transformer in front of the house blew up, which was just about every 6 months, we'd have no light for 3. The only electronics in the house till Festac 77 was the huge Blaupunkt ma insisted in bringing home from UK and the fridge. Imagine the bliss of world radios when we did have light. Thankfully, candles, lanterns and a torchlight when batteries could be afforded, were good for reading.

In the early 80s we moved to a ground floor but water moved like half a kilometre away and electric was like on a never never. Thankfully, the house behind ours was better pass we the neighbours and I just stuck my book out the window all night and read with the neighbours noisy light which worked for most books but not for studying Maths.

By the mid 80s, childhood? Telly? Not if you want chop you wouldn't, though like Naptu, midnight telly turned down low so as not to get caught, was fun when there was light. But after running along buses all day selling canned coke and eggs you might imagine how night was for sleep alone.

These books saved my life Ishi! I'd have been ignorant and dead otherwise. Some can be downloaded here

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Royver(m): 5:06pm On Jan 04, 2021
How you guys remember all these stuff I don't know!

I had flashbacks reading through this thread. Almost brought tears to my eyes grin

26 Likes 2 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by AgainstIslam(f): 5:52pm On Jan 04, 2021
ACRI:
Sweet memories I love the passport of mallam ilia An African night entertainment Once upon a village too
And these ones(foreign) The black arrow Lorna Doone
If you haven't read The African Child too, please do.

4 Likes

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by emitope: 9:54pm On Jan 04, 2021
This brought back some rich memories to me.
I'm just smiling sheepishly here.

7 Likes

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by illicit(m): 2:54pm On Jan 06, 2021
I used to have a library....

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Veecruz: 10:54am On Jan 07, 2021
naptu2:



Bros, you've said everything yet thank God you have not!

So I can add Nintendo's Super Mario, Duck Hunt, Contra and hand held games like Tetris, Car race, Bike Race, Swamp Thing, Spider Man and Super Man before Game Boy came out with more games and Colour video games and Game Gear.

Then in that Terminator Game Console having 150 games in one, my favourite was "Battle Tank".

I saw my Video Mart Card some years back and I could not wait to be 18 so that I could go to that "Adult Section"

Men, Life was plenty and sweet!

14 Likes 3 Shares

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Nobody: 9:35pm On Jan 09, 2021
They feed my generation with feminist crap like PURPLE HIBISCUS and AMERICANAH ...

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Nobody: 10:45pm On Jan 09, 2021
I'm still an avid reader at my leisure.

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Mide3367: 11:54pm On Jan 09, 2021
How time flies

1 Like

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by kingreign(m): 7:37am On Jan 10, 2021
Royver:
How you guys remember all these stuff I don't know!

I had flashbacks reading through this thread. Almost brought tears to my eyes grin

What happened, you stopped writing. Ive always lookup forward to reading your write-ups on imaginary and strange things in a tale.

4 Likes

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