Low life | 27 August 2011

In summer the cottage next door is let out to visitors. Each week there’s someone new. I see them coming and going and sometimes circumstances dictate that I get to meet them. Last week a man staying in the cottage came to the door to ask about the television signal in the village. It wasn’t very good, was it? This visitor spoke with a Welsh accent and limped.

Reception does vary a bit according to the weather, I said, but our signal seemed fairly strong at the moment. Theirs was fine at the beginning of the week, he said, but now the picture was breaking up on all freeview channels. This morning they’d had to abandon the Jeremy Kyle Show and watch Homes Under the Hammer on BBC1, which they weren’t keen on, to be honest, and now even BBC1 was unwatchable. It was very disappointing to come away on holiday and find the telly not working. If his daughter couldn’t watch Holby City later in the week, look out, he said.

Life is too short, surely, I thought, to be watching Homes Under the Hammer on a beautiful summer’s day. But I made sympathetic noises and said I’d pop round and have a look at their telly. With my long experience of poor reception, I said, I should be able to determine at a glance whether atmospherics were indeed to blame.

Fifteen minutes later I was welcomed into their sitting room and he introduced me to his wife, who was placidly knitting, his daughter and his son-in-law. The four of them were seated in a homely semi-circle around what my father used to call the idiots’ lantern. I now saw that the man’s limp had been caused by his artificial leg, which he had now removed for greater comfort when seated in an easy chair in front of the telly.