Outside the box

In the summer of 1999 I did something radical. Spurred on by my husband’s universal loathing of television I took our TV set to the landfill and I haven’t owned one since. Twenty unrepentant years without the demon box, and alive to tell the tale.

My family long ago accepted this stubborn eccentricity. They’ve grown used to the silence, the missing screen, the brutal fact that they won’t be able to watch the final of Strictly round at my place. A few friends have taken a different line, still hoping to sell me the benefits of owning a TV, particularly since my husband moved to a nursing home and I live alone. ‘It must get lonely,’ they say. ‘Get a cat, get a goldfish, get a telly.’

Other people’s reactions to this decision — I hesitate to use the words ‘lifestyle choice’ because I don’t really have a lifestyle, so let’s just call it a decision — have been at least as entertaining as anything I might have watched had I kept the beast.

First there are those who pay me completely undeserved homage. ‘Aren’t you good!’ they say, as though they’ve discovered me wearing a hair shirt. ‘I’ll bet you spend your spare time much more sensibly.’

Well, yes and no. It is true that if I had a television I’d rarely play my piano or sew, and I’d read half as many books, but I’m as capable as the next slacker of frittering away an hour. Being weaned off the telly teat doesn’t make you more noble or serious-minded, though I’m quite willing to bask in the mistaken impression that it does.

Then there are the defensives who get  ruffled and tell me they only watch documentaries.