We used to have just radio when the kids were little.
I preferred it that way.
It meant we could get on with our lives instead of shceduling our lives to fit in between the programmes on TV.
There were drawbacks, conversation at the school gates was invariably about the latest cliff hanger 'soap' rubbish.
However, there were many good points to being noTV.
The kids didn't badger us for fad toys.
We didn't need to think about all the latest new products in the supermarket.
We were quite happy with life without wishing for the artificial lifestyles portrayed on the screen.
OH brought a TV home with him one day much to my disgust and we have had it ever since.
18 years later and he finally announced a couple of weeks back that there was nothing on TV anymore.
This was triggered by his sitting in front of the screen for much of christmas flicking back and forth through endless repeats of Last of the summer wine and then on Christmas Eve the 2 ronnies etc.
All from the 1970's and 80's.
I pointed out to him that we could watch streaming TV for £5.99 a month.
Streaming TV is not live broadcast so if we only watched streaming stuff, we could cancel our TV license (£12 a month) and still watch something each night AND almost every thing we watch will be new to us.
It is a win /win situation.
OH will get to see something every single day that he hasn't seen before, he still can see his old favourites if he wants as there is plenty of choice there
AND
we no longer need to pay for the privelidge of being served up reconstituted TV that we have both seen before and been made to pay for if we watched it the first time round and every consequent time since.
AND
it is half the price of the ridiculous TV license.
Our set top box is going to charity. British Heart foundation will collect the machines from us to sell in their shop.
We have 2 set top boxes for them ,a video and a DVD player.
There will be one TV in this house which belongs to my daughter and that is only going to be kept for her to play DVDs on.
We have a ginormous monitor in the living room so we can watch our streaming films on that and feel like we are watching on a big screen telly.
The monitor was one OH rescued from the rubbish and is 50" wide. It hangs on the wall and the picture comes in through his little netbook which is only about 10" wide.
There is no sound on the monitor so he has a little speaker thing for that.
...................................................................................................................................................................
We were going to freecycle the video machines.
I listed them and then was bombarded with demands .
How rude people can be.
Although I listed everything seperately and waited a few days to be fair( so everyone gets to see the offers)
I had demands along the lines of ...
'I will take it all,where do you live'?
'Is it the such and such model,if it is I want it'
'Give me your address ,I will collect it today'
Then there were quite a few that made me feel uncomfortable just because they had
'sent from my iphone'
along the bottom of them.
These 'iphone' messages tended to be followed by others all from the same people with requests for all the other offers (we had 6 things on offer).
While I love freecycle and freegle and will continue to offer and request in the future, I will be checking the British Heart foundations website every time we have anything that is good enough to sell on ,incase they can make use of it purely because of the greedy gannets that sit and wait for their iphone messages to come rolling in .
I know not everyone is a trickster and many people don't mind their offers being sold on but I do mind and they are my things to decide about.
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