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What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV - Literature (6) - Nairaland

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by FILEBE(m): 12:47am On Jan 11, 2021
[quote author=naptu2 post=97692393][/quote]

Lwt wasn't burnt down around 1985. Nah. I was around long enough to know it was changed to LTV . Lwt still aired in the 90s . Yeah!!

Oh!!! Forgotten DBN? The nightshift show.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by naptu2: 12:50am On Jan 11, 2021
FILEBE:


Lwt wasn't burnt down around 1985. Nah. I was around long enough to know it was changed to LTV . Lwt still aired in the 90s . Yeah!!

Oh!!! Forgotten DBN? The nightshift show.

The LWT studios burnt down in 1985 and that was the end of their marathon transmission. That's what I wrote.

They were still known as LWT into the mid-1990s, but they didn't run a marathon transmission. They went off air at midnight like other stations after the studio burnt down in 1985.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Soknown: 12:59am On Jan 11, 2021
Ishilove:
This was our Netflix back in the days...
Ngugi wa Thiongo. Can't forget that name.
The Achebe's Trilogy.
Mills and Boons books.
Pace-setters books.
Hints.
Vintage papers.
Better lovers.
Hardly Chase books.
Ralia, the Sugar girl.
D.O Fagunwa's books
The beautiful ones are not yet born.
Children of Ananze.
The zero hour.
And many more.
Thanks Ishilove.

1 Like

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Soknown: 1:09am On Jan 11, 2021
jagorinho:


Do you know if there is an English version of Ogboju ode ninu Igbo irunmole or where I can get the e format of any version available to you?
The author of that book would make a good series writer nowadays, very top notch imaginations.
I am waiting for that day, when nollywood will develop to the extent of adapting some of these books into Series, Or Hollywood will snatch it in the mould of Black Panther. These classics should be our Harry Porter. The imagination and the delivery was out of this world.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by jagorinho: 1:18am On Jan 11, 2021
Soknown:

I am waiting for that day, when nollywood will develop to the extent of adapting some of these books into Series, Or Hollywood will snatch it in the mould of Black Panther. These classics should be our Harry Porter. The imagination and the delivery was out of this world.

I have read a lot of books both international and local, none comes close to that guy's imagination, That Fagunwa was a genius in suspense, Damn it.

I was lucky I could read Yoruba texts but my friends were poor in reading yoruba so they couldn't feel those books.

I love Cyprian Ekwensi too, I think he is underrated, His early life in the north made him set most of his plots in Northern Nigeria. His Burning Grass was a classic, a good insight about the Fulani culture.

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Icekyng: 2:14am On Jan 11, 2021
Ishilove:

Thanks dear.
Lol why you dy savage am na grin angry
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by budaatum: 2:44am On Jan 11, 2021
Dpaulie:
Ogboju ode ninu Igbo irunmale
Igbo olodumare
Aditu olodumare
Irinkerindo ninu igbo elegbeje
Ireke onibudo
Damn, they were hard! Lol.

In school one day, teacher said we will all have to introduce a word in our local language to the class so should get our parents to teach us one.

Easy, you'd think, except ma was away all week training to be a nurse and had instructed my siblings and I not to squeek while dad was studying lawyer or its our fault if he failed, again, emphasis hers, so buda never asked.

Day comes. Students from France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey Cameroon, Ghana, London, Jews, everywhere, all stand and say a word in their local language then it's buda's turn. buda stands proudly and says "Finito. It means finished".

Teacher look buda one kind eye and goes, "Finito is not a Yoruba word!"

I learnt my Yoruba from age 7 with those books when my cousin came from village and brought them all. Makes me wonder why I never picked any Yoruba up from my parents talking it that the only Yoruba I knew was finito - dad's favourite word after supper. I was 5.

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Jubilancy(f): 3:07am On Jan 11, 2021
Anyone with working sony VCD PLAYER complete with the game disk and pad please indicate oooo


I need that vcd player ...
If any one who resides in lagos have it please hit me up Asap
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by bewla(m): 3:13am On Jan 11, 2021
uboma:
The good old days, I still miss em...
No come here they form



if you still read S S


then u no they among us
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 3:15am On Jan 11, 2021
budaatum:

Damn, they were hard! Lol.

In school one day, teacher said we will all have to introduce a word in our local language to the class so should get our parents to teach us one.

Easy, you'd think, except ma was away all week training to be a nurse and had instructed my siblings and I not to squeek while dad was studying lawyer or its our fault if he failed, again, emphasis hers, so buda never asked.

Day comes. Students from France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey Cameroon, Ghana, London, Jews, everywhere, all stand and say a word in their local language then it's buda's turn. buda stands proudly and says "Finito. It means finished".

Teacher look buda one kind eye and goes, "Finito is not a Yoruba word!"

I learnt my Yoruba from age 7 with those books when my cousin came from village and brought them all. Makes me wonder why I never picked any Yoruba up from my parents talking it that the only Yoruba I knew was finito - dad's favourite word after supper. I was 5.
grin grin grin

1 Like

Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by favour32(m): 4:07am On Jan 11, 2021
Those days dey natural pass now.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by ussv: 5:15am On Jan 11, 2021
Thanks for bringing back old memories
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Munzy14(m): 5:30am On Jan 11, 2021
Indomie generations are not used to reading...cheesy
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by naptu2: 6:12am On Jan 11, 2021
Here's the entire conversation. The thread was actually about Kokoro, the real life "Drummer Boy" that inspired Cyprian Ekwensi to write the novel. I saw him almost every day and that's what I was writing about when someone asked me this question.

shakablaiize:
baba good evening sir... can you please tell us a story on how you survived without phones back then??


naptu2:


Telephone service was provided by P&T (Posts And Telecoms) which became Nitel in 1985. There were area codes - Ikoyi was 68, Victoria Island was 61, Lagos Island was 62, Festac was 88, Ikeja was 97, etc.

You had to wait for a dialling tone before you could make a call. We were lucky, the government paid our phone bill.

There were huge telephone books (1978, 1979, 1982 and 1983) and you could find people's phone numbers with the telephone books.

Some short codes were 199 (emergency), 198 (speaking clock), but I can't remember what the ring back short code was.

You had to book international calls with the operator.

shakablaiize:
yes sir about the phone book i found one in my dad's wardrobe when i asked him if he knew every body in the book... he smiled and said you won't understand my son...i was much younger tho.... mehn life much have been really boring without internet

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

www.nairaland.com/attachments/12969657_images_jpeg_jpegeb6c065c105cfe1af50da1aeadfb7a99

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 Ray07(m): 6:56am On Jan 11, 2021
nihilistjnr:


Wasnt that the one that had One-eyed Sunday in it?

Damn what a throw back
yeah grin
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by FILEBE(m): 6:59am On Jan 11, 2021
naptu2:


The LWT studios burnt down in 1985 and that was the end of their marathon transmission. That's what I wrote.

They were still known as LWT into the mid-1990s, but they didn't run a marathon transmission. They went off air at midnight like other stations after the studio burnt down in 1985.

Oh Okay.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by wajaja: 7:34am On Jan 11, 2021
ayovenice:
you forgot to mention Dr who,rentaghost,one dog series like that that the black one is wicked to the yellow one,telematch..... the good old days

I remembered that Dog series, with their long big tails.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by naptu2: 7:35am On Jan 11, 2021
joseph1832:
Nope. Somewhere in Ikeja where it's safe and sound and discipline is enforced.

Alausa?

I know people who lived somewhere in Alausa and they had 24 hours power. Their explanation was that power that was sent to Lagos from the grid landed in Alausa before it was distributed to the rest of Lagos.


There was a time that we had 24 hours power for almost 2 years. That's because we were on the same line with State House Dodan Barracks. Unfortunately we were removed from that line a few months before the NEPA strike of 1989.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by joseph1832(m): 7:42am On Jan 11, 2021
naptu2:

Alausa?

I know people who lived somewhere in Alausa and they had 24 hours power. Their explanation was that power that was sent to Lagos from the grid landed in Alausa before it was distributed to the rest of Lagos.


There was a time that we had 24 hours power for almost 2 years. That's because we were on the same line with State House Dodan Barracks. Unfortunately we were removed from that line a few months before the NEPA strike of 1989.
Nope.

One of the barracks in Ikeja. Won't mention because I don't want to divulge too much info.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by naptu2: 7:47am On Jan 11, 2021
joseph1832:
Nope.

One of the barracks in Ikeja. Won't mention because I don't want to divulge too much info.

OK. Understood.

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 7:52am On Jan 11, 2021
joseph1832:
Nope.

One of the barracks in Ikeja. Won't mention because I don't want to divulge too much info.
No wonder you're so military minded tongue
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 7:53am On Jan 11, 2021
wajaja:


I remembered that Dog series, with their long big tails.
The Chuckle Hounds
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by wajaja: 7:53am On Jan 11, 2021
Soknown:

Ngugi wa Thiongo. Can't forget that name.
The Achebe's Trilogy.
Mills and Boons books.
Pace-setters books.
Hints.
Vintage papers.
Better lovers.
Hardly Chase books.
Ralia, the Sugar girl.
D.O Fagunwa's books
The beautiful ones are not yet born.
Children of Ananze.
The zero hour.
And many more.
Thanks Ishilove.

Bad Child...Better lova....
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by joseph1832(m): 8:12am On Jan 11, 2021
Ishilove:

No wonder you're so military minded tongue
how come people have been saying that to me recently. Lol.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by Ishilove: 8:15am On Jan 11, 2021
joseph1832:
how come people have been saying that to me recently. Lol.
It shows na grin
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by kayo80(m): 8:16am On Jan 11, 2021
I wasn't really a lover of books back then, but I loved The Passport of Mallam Ilia. It was such a great read...I loved the part where he was in a wrestling match or so, and got stabbed in the belly. It was so vivid in my head as I read it. I would love to read the book again as an adult. Other books as I liked as a preteen and teenager are...Sidney Sheldon books, and Sweat Valley High, the university edition...Sweet Valley Uni or something like that.

Anyway, I didn't do much reading, even though my dad had a gazilion books at home. I did more of playing video games. I remember seeing the Atari video game at a cousin's house for the first time in the 80s (88 OR 89, can't remember)...I fell in love instantly. During the ride home, surprisingly, my mom convinced my dad to get one for us. I really couldn't believe my mom was fighting for us the kids to get a video game, lol. The next week, we went to Cash N Carry off Marina in Lagos Island to get the Atari. It was the best day of my life back then. We had Pacman of course, an airplane flying game, and some other cartridges I can't remember. From Atari, we went to Sega Genesis a few years later. It was around 1992 when the ABG cable came along I started playing less games, and watching more Cartoon Network and Sky movie channels.

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Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by joseph1832(m): 8:17am On Jan 11, 2021
Ishilove:

It shows na grin
oh really. Never knew. Lol.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by mechanics(m): 8:44am On Jan 11, 2021
Ishilove:
This was our Netflix back in the days...
lolz.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by mechanics(m): 8:45am On Jan 11, 2021
Khalesie:
I luv u ishi
hmmmm.
Re: What We Entertained Ourselves With Before Cable TV by princessConfy(f): 8:50am On Jan 11, 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.

can you send me the bottled leopard in PDF

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