In Tune with my Inner Geek

We've had digital television for a couple of years now. It's pretty good - without it I wouldn't have seen what Derek Acorah looks like when he gets possessed by a spirit (deceased, not alcoholic, for those unfamiliar with "Most Haunted"). There are a lot of repeats, but sometimes old stuff deserves to be seen again. Shows I enjoyed in my youth, like "Quantum Leap", "The Crystal Maze" and the now sadly defunct "Forty Minutes" strand of documentaries have a charmingly retro appeal now I'm approaching my thirties with trepidation. I like to think I'm expanding my cultural horizons by watching the American version of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" on Five US, too. Even if I'm not, it makes me laugh. The freeview box seemed to break a few weekends ago and I wasn't happy about it.

The boyfriend had begun his usual weekend breakfast routine of stalking around downstairs in his dressing gown, making a big pot of coffee and collapsing on the sofa to watch one of those music video channels. The picture kept breaking up and getting pixelated, so he decided to rescan to try and get better reception, at which point the box gave up. There was no electronic programme guide. There was no picture. There was no signal even. He was very apologetic as he thought he'd broken everything (although he used the event as an excuse to look at huge tv sets with built in freeview tuners on the Comet website). Luckily I stepped in before the monstrous screen that we really can't afford was ordered.

The BBC have some really useful webpages that should be everyone's first port of call when they're having trouble with tv or radio reception, digital or otherwise. Here they produce a list of transmitters that are undergoing essential maintenance work and details about whether this work is likely to cause interruptions to your tv viewing or radio listening. If you have freeview, the box should tell you which transmitter you use when you start scanning for channels, but there is a handy map that shows where all the transmitters are on the BBC website too. It turns out that our local one, Bluebell Hill, was liable to severe disruption for five days, including that weekend. So all we had to do was wait until the danger period was over, rescan and lo and behold, the signal had come back and we had television again.

The only reason I know about the ready availability of BBC advice on reception is that in the past I skirted around the periphery of a career in radio. I was a geeky teenager who read the news on hospital radio and generally hung around with people who knew about engineering, transmitters and other such things. Back then reception advice was on Ceefax and if you rang a lonely engineer in an office at the BBC local radio station and asked him nicely, he might send you a handy leaflet on how to build your own FM booster aerial. These days similar engineers are online and they're providing an amazingly comprehensive service. You can e-mail them questions and they provide links to the websites of all freeview box manufacturers to help people get to grips with digital tv. The service seems to have grown and obviously moved with the times, but it's still friendly and kind of excited about the joy of technology. I don't reckon that many people know that it's there, though. I bet a lot of people around here bought freeview boxes over that weekend, plugged them in and assumed they didn't work because they didn't know that the local transmitter wasn't working. Thus I am trying to make the world a better place by telling people about this great web page. Honestly, the BBC should put more effort into advertising its existence. And there endeth the geek sermon for the day :-)

Legal Technicalities

In the run up to exchanging contracts on the flat, the boyfriend and I have received huge bundles of papers from our solicitor that required our attention. One of these was an old deed of covenant from 1860, when the building housing the flat was put up. This worried me a bit to start with, as the flat is near a large church and I'd read that ecclesiastical covenants requiring property owners to contribute to the maintenance of local religious buildings are more common than people realise. Luckily it wasn't anything remotely like that. It set out restrictions on what activities could be carried out in the building. Among other things we are not allowed to skin dogs, gut cats or boil horse flesh on the premises. So that's my top three home business ideas out of the picture then :-)