An Experiment with Time and Christmas

Here comes the second of tonight's big programmes. The first was Aladdin, with its atmosphere of old-fashioned Christmas; Half the World Away is Christmas-in-modern-dress, one of those fascinating, highly technical programmes which someone devises every now and then to remind us that broadcasting and wireless telephony really are modern miracles. The idea of Half the World Away is briefly this. Here we are, comfortably seated in one part or another of the British Isles, having celebrated Christmas in as near the good old-fashioned way as finances have allowed. At the same time, or later and earlier as the variations of time decree, there are millions of other Britishers all round the world celebrating Christmas in their particular way. The day is almost at an end here; before it closes, why shouldn't we get into touch with other parts of the Empire and hear what Christmas is, has been, or will be like with them?

In the studio at Savoy Hill sits Stephen King-Hall, a seasoned broadcaster whose intimate and informal microphone manner is well known to most of us. Arrangements have been made to connect him by telephone with various corners of the Empire. He will ask them what kind of Christmas they have spent, how things are going, what the weather is like. Their replies, following one after another as quickly as the technical intricacies of the programme will allow, should, if things are successful, present a picture, the title of which might be 'An Empire keeps Christmas.' On page 967 you will find a map illustrating the course this Empire Tour will take.

The time-variation to which we referred above is part of the fascination of the programme. We start from Britain ; the time in 9.45 p.m. Our kicking-off point is, appropriately, the Tower of London, where Mr. King-Hall will chat with Mr. Smoker, the Yeoman Porter , whose voice we have often heard in reply to the challenge of the sentries during the Ceremony of the Keys broadcasts. How has Mr. Smoker spent Christmas?
After the Tower we fly on telephonic wings to the wild coasts of the North, where a lighthouse keeper will have something to say about his Christmas Day; next to Gibraltar, where the little British colony will be celebrating Christmas in the good old way; and on to Cape Town. As we ring off from Cape Town, where it will be midnight, we shall hear Big Ben strike ten in London. Our next hop will be an enormous one - across to Sydney, N.S.W., where it is now Boxing Day in high summer and Bradman will soon be piling up runs under a baking blue sky.
From, Sydney to Vancouver-another big 'hop.' In Vancouver they will just have finished lunch; thus we shall have recaptured, with modern magic, the whole of Christmas afternoon. On we go to Edmonton, and then to Montreal, with a pause at Niagara Falls. If luck is with us and the Falls are not frozen solid (fantastic thought), we shall hear, for the first time in this country, the voice of those titanic waters; 1,000,000 cubic feet of water pass over the Falls each second. If you had a penny for every pint of this, your income would be nearly seven billion pounds a year. This sort of. statistics makes us quite tired-but there you are ! someone must have bothered to work it out. In Montreal we shall find them finishing tea, and when, on our homeward flight across the Atlantic, we stop to talk to the liner Majestic, we shall interrupt someone at dinner. From the Majestic we pass to Dublin and, as Big Ben's hands are creeping towards 10.30, back to London.