A 'New' Television

The Sanyo has been playing up for the past few days.  The only person who can get it to go from Standby to On is Ferretfingers.  This hasn’t gone down well with Thunderthighs who habitually watches Last Of The Summer Wine whilst having his post-paper-round-snack.

So Fester has been down to The British Heart Foundation Shop (where we buy all our tellies) and got one big/small enough to fit in the alcove between the chimney breast and the living room’s outside wall.

When he paid for the telly the lady at the till asked “Do you want the stand that goes with it?”

He thought she meant ‘the black leg thingy underneath’ and said “Yes.”

She actually meant a three shelved glass and chrome floor standing unit.

As he'd paid for it we brought it home: fitting it and the telly into the boot was an interesting challenge for the store man.

I had a brainwave: turned upside down it gives two shelves ideal for germination and hardening off smaller seedlings.   

We cleared the middle shelf of the pottisserie and slid it in.  

It fits perfectly, as if it had been planned.

I turned my attention to switching tellies.

Once I’d shifted the phone, address books, brass pen holding jug, Coundown Calendar and everything else that was in the way, unplugging the DVD player, Tivo box, aerial, cordless headphones transmitter and power lead was relatively simple.  I picked up the old telly and laid it carefully on the chaise longue; where it sat until Fester was “told exactly where to put it.”

Next, of course, the shelf had to be properly dusted, probably for the first time since the last telly was installed.  To achieve this the DVD player and Tivo box had to be shifted around and picked up.

The problem with installing a tv is that all the bloody sockets are at the back in the least accessible spaces possible, under an overhang with any signage charcoal grey on black.  Next to useless in a poorly lit corner for someone whose reading glasses don’t stay on when her head is turned nearly upside down.  Obviously designed by a man.

Also: whilst the alcove is an inch or so wider than the telly, it is only a third as deep as the tv is wide.  So turning the thing around to find the appropriate socket entails holding it in place with one arm whilst fumbling about with the other.  That’s not too bad for the aerial, which is circular, but every flaming other plug and hole only work one way – and there are between two and four alternative approaches before you find the correct one.  All the while trying to balance the damn thing and stop it from falling off the DVD player (which we almost never use).  After a considerable amount of screaming and swearing the SCART, HMDI and power leads were in. 

At this point Thunderthighs came in and loomed on the hearthrug.

“What do you want?”

“Can I help you?”

“Not now really, it’s all done”

Plug in, switch on, it comes on and there we are watching BBC1 Escape To The Country. I’m just about to work out how to change it from Freeview to Tivo when Ferretfingers whips in, grabs the remote and puts on Autotune, thus stopping all further progress until the damn thing’s finished finding and logging all the channels.

I suspect half the street heard what I thought of that, as he was told to leave the room in no uncertain terms and at volume.

 

When it was all sorted I came upstairs to the office and Fester greeted me with 

"Hello tv wizz" 

"Fircough and then fircough a bit further."

"What was the explosion about?"

So I told him and his response was “Oh I heard it and I thought ‘She’s angry about something.  Shall I go down and find out what?’  Then I thought ‘No. Best not to interfere.’” 

Everything that’s plugged in works.

The new telly has a proper on/off switch, so there’s no excuse for leaving it on standby overnight.

The old telly responded to the mute and volume control on the Tivo remote.  

This one doesn’t, but it does respond to the old telly’s remote, so maybe Fester won’t have to relearn where the mute button is (I do wish they’d standardise that sort of thing)

But there is no headphone socket so Ferretfingers will have to put up with the noise of my viewing and I’m freed from the cordless headphones.  Which is a two-edged sword as sometimes they make hearing what is being mumbled onscreen a lot easier, especially against the background noise of this house.

In the past two days Fester has bought a new microwave, toaster and replacement tv.

He’s just said (in true Yorkshire fashion) 

“I’ve come over all wan.  It must be all the money I’ve spent.”

 

 

POST SCRIPT 

I went downstairs to chivvy Ferretfingers up to bed.

Laying the fabric screen protector on the keyboard and carefully closing his laptop he asked

"Do you like your new television?"