I don’t believe it. It’s actually true. I was beginning to think they didn’t exist – and were some kind of legendary phantom occurence like the Yeti or getting a table at Momofuku on a weekend night.
Today a helpful man from Time Warner came around. This is our third visit from the communications company – the first two were for our internet, which has the speed of an unbothered slug. Nothing could be done about fixing it apparently – even though we pay $50 a month for the semi-high speed option. On both occasions, neither answered my questions or in fact really paid any attention to me, other to mumble something about a ‘faulty box’.
Today’s visit was to install cable and the nice man said it wouldn’t be a problem to fix up the internet at the same time and move it to a place I’d asked the previous two to do.
(The first guy had plonked all the unsightly wires in the middle of the kitchen and upset the pretty plant/window combo.)
I made him a nice cup of coffee for being such a gent and if I had any of my $7 McVities Dark Chocolate Digestives left I would have given him one of those too.
ANYWAY… television. It’s been two months, two weeks and three days since we last had one.
I’ve met people who claim to not watch television – out of choice – and frankly, I don’t trust them. Do they not like David Attenborough? Downton Abbey? EastEnders? If you want to intellectualise it, what about Newsnight, University Challenge or Jon Snow? Parents who deliberately impose restrictions on their kids watching television are missing out on one of the main sources of childcare – Peppa Pig.
Life without TV is boring. I have hobbies – I like exercise, reading (yes, sometimes even newspapers), knitting, embroidery (actually, the cross stitching is making me go mad and blind – I bought it because we didn’t have a television) and all kinds of other life-enriching pursuits.
But there’s nothing like a bit of television.
Of course, now we’ll have to subscribe to those UK services that cheat the IPs and copyright laws and allow you to catch up on the BBC’s new adaptation of Bird Song (#gnawsfistoffwithexcitement) and, yes, we’ll have to get our head around our six billion channels of US TV, the Super Bowl and the age-defying faces of the NBC Today show presenters. We also have HBO! Sigh.
The nice Time Warner man has even just taken five patient minutes to show me how the remote works. And he’s tacked a long wire – very neatly – around our huge doors so the socket is on the other side of the room from the source. Someone give him a pay rise. Should I have tipped him?
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