Upon the blocky Cee
Those Fax have all been shut off
By a fully digital B.B.C.
No more Ceefax to surf
Some might shout out with glee
Because they found it oh-so-slow
Compared with new technology
But never more will anyone
Surf dear old Ceefax again
It’s only analogue you see
What once was “now” is “when”
No more will I be forced to wait
For the page that has just been
To scroll around to the start again
To choose my cinema screen
No more those simple fun and games
Of pressing a “reveal”
To find the answer to a quiz
Or this year’s Christmas meal
The Teletext holiday bargains
Are to be no more
Now I’ll have to ring an agent
To pick my sandy shore
No more those blocky pictures
Of trains and all things strange
That could be formed with big ol’ squares
And colours of small range
No more the latest sports results
Popping up in vision
The growing tension of who’d play who
Or in which division
I’ve been missing you a while now
Since switchovers were made
But it was nice to know you were out there
Our licence fee well paid
Now I get my news by other means
In our brave new digital world
But it’s thanks to your ground-breaking work
That such a world unfurled
So never more will I go surfing
On Ceefax when I get home
Those Fax have all gone away now
To a button red in tone
BBC Ceefax 1974-2012. Goodbye, old friend.
Well, it was crap anyway.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...
DeleteComing (as we did) quite late to the dubious delights of the digital revolution, we did retain a fondness for Ceefax (and Oracle) far later than some it would seem...
I was still using it in Wales until the bitter end. It was crap though. Yell once had a plan for a ceefax style directory called yellow screenfax pages. Never took off... wonder why?
ReplyDeleteMind you, when you consider what they were working with, I was always impressed that they were able to achieve so much with so little...
Delete(Perhaps that ought to be my own motto...?)