The sky's the limit

Earth Station `La Mort Limouzin`

I tell you, the Ark is getting more and more up-to- date! Not to mention our two superannuated Apple computers and Kim's more modern lap-top, we now have my I-Pad as I told you a few Arks ago and recently we have actually invested in a satellite English TV! Not that we invested very MUCH of our finances, as we obtained the second- hand Sky-box and an old-fashioned CRT type TV from Alan and Elaine at the Field Emporium, which I can thoroughly recommend. They helped us fit the new units and now our Ground Station receiver dish, firmly attached to the barn stares fixedly at a point just above next door's palm tree where the satellite floats 35,700 km above us. We can thus get five UK television stations, which is quite sufficient for our tastes. Why, when I was a kid, you could only get one, and that was black-and-white!
   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....