Tales of a Fifty-Five Inch Telly
"We're going to need a bigger telly! I've ordered one already."
"Erm......I've been thinking. Haven't you noticed how the telly flickers in the top right hand corner on occasion? Don't you think we should get a new one now?"
"The bloke who fitted the new Sky box on Wednesday said our telly was smaller than the ones in most customers' houses. He told me fifty-five inches is about the norm now."
"Our telly is quite old now you know. Maybe it's about time we considered retiring it to the spare room upstairs?"
I considered how all of these imagined conversation starters on the subject of our eleven year old tv set with Ali might play out. And then failed to do anything further. Even though a brand new contraption with internet capabilities really doesn't cost that much anymore, it seemed a very extravagant idea. I'd let it ride for another year. And all because my eyesight has obviously deteriorated that little bit further.
All of this came sharply into focus as a result of a completely out of focus moment on Saturday morning, when Ali had gone off to college for the one day a week of teaching that she still seems to do without complaint, while I settled down on the sofa for a second cup of tea and a spot of idle entertainment, courtesy of those YouTube chaps I follow. Saturday mornings still hold that wonderful sense of liberation, despite me having retired sixteen months ago, simply because I can hog the big sofa in its entirety and not have to watch endless cookery shows. Well obviously the cat joins me, but she's small and doubles up as a hot water bottle on these cold winter days so it's a win win situation that we're both otherwise denied when the boss is at home. On this morning of quiet release, the YouTube landing page offered me a story by Thomas Heaton, with a title that told me somebody had walked straight into the composition he'd arrived especially early for and set up their own tripod, completely oblivious to the unspoken etiquette that we togs obey in such circumstances. It was only a ten minute story. I'd watch this, knock up a bit of brekkie and then decide whether to take the van down to Botallack again. I didn't - clear sky and nothing much doing in the sea - not according to the Magic Seaweed app at any rate.
The video started, with a distant lone photographer rambling over the early morning landscape and the commentary began. "What's up with Tom?" I wondered to myself. At first I thought perhaps he had a cold. Then I wondered whether the video was playing at the right speed. Had Tom been at the nitrous oxide? The voice sounded a bit like Tom - but something wasn't quite right. Then the walker came closer, not near enough to his video camera to be fully defined, but had Tom also developed a set of mutton chops since I last watched him? I paused the video, laughingly wondering whether I might spot some settings that were somehow out of kilter, and squinted at the telly in the opposite corner of the room. And now I realised what the problem was. If we'd only had a fifty-five inch telly I wouldn't have been so confused over the last two and a half minutes. I strained my eyes that bit more closely at the screen, taking care not to disturb the cat (she still jumps out of her fur at the sight of her own shadow four years after we rescued her) and realised that Thomas Heaton was in fact Thomas Haslam. I'd never heard of Thomas Haslam, but he'd appeared in my suggested feed, so out of politeness I finished the video, sighing with him at the crass behaviour of that tog who'd planted his tripod right in the middle of Tom's composition. He was at Stanage Edge - hope it wasn't you. Of course it wasn't you - you'd never do that.
Luckily our hero headed off to a quieter spot and found a very different reflection shot of a lone tree halfway up a quarry wall. He went home feeling slightly happier.
A day earlier, somebody had walked into my composition here at Godrevy. But of course I hadn't noticed, because he was the thirty-seven inch version rather than the fifty-five inch version. And I didn't mind, because whoever he was, I thought he made the shot a tiny bit more interesting. After all, this is a place where people love to stand on clifftops and look towards the lighthouse.
Of course if we did retire the old TV set up to the spare room I could watch the football on Sunday afternoons without causing any bother you know. Maybe it's time to stand upside down and see how much falls out of my pockets........
Tales of a Fifty-Five Inch Telly
"We're going to need a bigger telly! I've ordered one already."
"Erm......I've been thinking. Haven't you noticed how the telly flickers in the top right hand corner on occasion? Don't you think we should get a new one now?"
"The bloke who fitted the new Sky box on Wednesday said our telly was smaller than the ones in most customers' houses. He told me fifty-five inches is about the norm now."
"Our telly is quite old now you know. Maybe it's about time we considered retiring it to the spare room upstairs?"
I considered how all of these imagined conversation starters on the subject of our eleven year old tv set with Ali might play out. And then failed to do anything further. Even though a brand new contraption with internet capabilities really doesn't cost that much anymore, it seemed a very extravagant idea. I'd let it ride for another year. And all because my eyesight has obviously deteriorated that little bit further.
All of this came sharply into focus as a result of a completely out of focus moment on Saturday morning, when Ali had gone off to college for the one day a week of teaching that she still seems to do without complaint, while I settled down on the sofa for a second cup of tea and a spot of idle entertainment, courtesy of those YouTube chaps I follow. Saturday mornings still hold that wonderful sense of liberation, despite me having retired sixteen months ago, simply because I can hog the big sofa in its entirety and not have to watch endless cookery shows. Well obviously the cat joins me, but she's small and doubles up as a hot water bottle on these cold winter days so it's a win win situation that we're both otherwise denied when the boss is at home. On this morning of quiet release, the YouTube landing page offered me a story by Thomas Heaton, with a title that told me somebody had walked straight into the composition he'd arrived especially early for and set up their own tripod, completely oblivious to the unspoken etiquette that we togs obey in such circumstances. It was only a ten minute story. I'd watch this, knock up a bit of brekkie and then decide whether to take the van down to Botallack again. I didn't - clear sky and nothing much doing in the sea - not according to the Magic Seaweed app at any rate.
The video started, with a distant lone photographer rambling over the early morning landscape and the commentary began. "What's up with Tom?" I wondered to myself. At first I thought perhaps he had a cold. Then I wondered whether the video was playing at the right speed. Had Tom been at the nitrous oxide? The voice sounded a bit like Tom - but something wasn't quite right. Then the walker came closer, not near enough to his video camera to be fully defined, but had Tom also developed a set of mutton chops since I last watched him? I paused the video, laughingly wondering whether I might spot some settings that were somehow out of kilter, and squinted at the telly in the opposite corner of the room. And now I realised what the problem was. If we'd only had a fifty-five inch telly I wouldn't have been so confused over the last two and a half minutes. I strained my eyes that bit more closely at the screen, taking care not to disturb the cat (she still jumps out of her fur at the sight of her own shadow four years after we rescued her) and realised that Thomas Heaton was in fact Thomas Haslam. I'd never heard of Thomas Haslam, but he'd appeared in my suggested feed, so out of politeness I finished the video, sighing with him at the crass behaviour of that tog who'd planted his tripod right in the middle of Tom's composition. He was at Stanage Edge - hope it wasn't you. Of course it wasn't you - you'd never do that.
Luckily our hero headed off to a quieter spot and found a very different reflection shot of a lone tree halfway up a quarry wall. He went home feeling slightly happier.
A day earlier, somebody had walked into my composition here at Godrevy. But of course I hadn't noticed, because he was the thirty-seven inch version rather than the fifty-five inch version. And I didn't mind, because whoever he was, I thought he made the shot a tiny bit more interesting. After all, this is a place where people love to stand on clifftops and look towards the lighthouse.
Of course if we did retire the old TV set up to the spare room I could watch the football on Sunday afternoons without causing any bother you know. Maybe it's time to stand upside down and see how much falls out of my pockets........