The Wonders of Wax

In the early 70's the pianist and I, on impulse to fulfill our role as guides to the young minds of our children, embarked on family viewing of a programme called The University of the Air. At that time the television set was in what we called the TV room, a tiny room in which we had inserted sound proofing to the walls so as to avoid noise pollution disturbing the cultural sanctity of the rest of the house.  The programme was developed by CTV and began at 6 AM for a half hour with a variety of topics, presented largely as lectures. We had been given an electrical warming platter by a grateful patient so the pianist used it to keep our porridge warm as we all assembled at 6AM in little chairs to watch and listen as the lecturer discussed the Wonders of Wax for the half hour, or other equally dreary topics. This meant of course that we woke at the ungodly hour of 5:30AM to make breakfast before the programme. In retrospect, to have imposed this unconscionable event on three little children from 10 to 15 years of age, not withstanding the pianist and me, and our busy day, was education gone mad, breakfast interruptess, and well meaning insanity. Thank goodness the grumbling from the pediatric set soon brought an end to this misattempt at togetherness and we all went our own way without further necessity to ruminate on the wonders of wax. I do think however , given a topic like the wonder of wax, the real wonder is that CTV was able to continue this programme from 1966 to 1983. They probably got a Canada culture grant. Our mistake!