In its glory days, it quietly played classical music throughout the working day. “I’ve always listened to classical music in the background while I work.” And his colleagues didn’t ever complain that Mozart, Bach and Händel were distracting them from their work. He’s absolutely certain of that.
Then, one day, the old beast gave up the ghost. A broken valve. Getting it repaired would have meant lugging the bulky thing into town, and its owner wasn’t up for that. And so the brown beast was left to spend its days gathering dust on a shelf. The computer took over the job of playing classical music, quietly, with the occasional swell when the score demanded it.
The radio is now set to be passed on, and Bos feels a pang at the thought of it leaving. He hopes it will find a new home with an enthusiast willing to nurse it back to life. After all, the sound it produced was perfectly decent – at least, in his opinion.