Earth Station `La Mort Limouzin` |
We have resisted getting English TV since we came here twelve years ago, as watching French TV, especially the news, is excellent for learning French and increases fluency and understanding amazingly. However, we felt we were reasonably fluent now and pined a bit for our favourite programmes, so we sold out but will still watch the French set quite often.
But then, a couple of days ago, disaster struck and our enjoyment was put at risk. We were sitting watching when Mumu the half grown kitten caused chaos, for with a noise like the crash of doom, the set fell from its TV table onto its face on the floor!! I doubted if it could survive the impact, but on being put back and the various leads put back in, it actually powered up. However, something had shifted inside for the colours were disturbed, towards the bottom half of the screen, faces turned a strangely cyanosed blue. Watching was not the same at all....
Well, it was a question either of getting a TV engineer to call at 50Eur an hour or locating another old English TV, no contest really. Kim went onto Facebook and quickly located two fairly close to us. We collected the first, which had been stored in a barn and had no remote. The price was right, though, free! We did donate a bottle of wine, though. However, when I connected and turned on the unit, it ran for a few moments and quit... Not the donor`s fault, they did say no guarantee that it was working.
We therefor collected the second TV yesterday. This was a more hopeful unit as it had been used in a spare bedroom and was indoors and with a remote. Much to my surprise, the set worked straightaway, without any need of tuning so all the TV characters have regained their normal colour faces. Hooray, we were back in business at a cost of two bottles of wine. And as a bonus, we were able to visit two charming families, I am tempted to invent another `want` to enable us to meet more!
Bye for now, going to watch the telly....