Satelite Stress

Back in April (in the middle of house-training-hell) I came downstairs to find no accidents whatsoever. But Henry was acting very guilty, looking all too cute and wagging his tail in that special way which means he has done something he shoudn't.



As I couldn't find anything I let him out and carried on with breakfast as usual and it was only when I was tidying up for the day that I saw it. A puddle on the shelf under the tv. I really didn't beleive my eyes, how can a puddle appear on a shelf? Unless it had been but there by someone with stripey fur.



On further investigation I realised that it was exactly what I thought it was, wee. Wee on the shelf, dripped off the shelf and most of all all over the satelite box. Oh dear. I didn't really know where to start apart from disconnecting the power to make it all safe.



After thinking about it for a short time I decided to go for it, clearing up wee isn't the nicest of jobs but when it's cold and on your tv shelf it's even worse so armed with a bucket of hot soapy water and a cloth I disconnected the wires going into the back of the box and carefully lifted it, trying not to disturb the puddle. For some reason it must have had some electricity still in it as the box made my fingers tingle when I touched it.



Then I carefully wiped the box down, followed by the cables and shelf and also checking for drips onto the carpet, it was like a scene from CSI.



I decided to take a look at the inside of the box, if it was just a resistor it should be fixable but once I opened it up I discovered that several parts had really corroded - never underestimate the power of wee, it's very corrosive especially on the inside of a satelite box.



The box was unfixable (I wouldn't have had the cheek to give it to a repair man) and this was a big problem as we live in the middle of the hills in the middle of nowhere and we don't get a tv signal at all so satelite it the only way we can watch tv. I decided that tv wasn't a high priority in the entertainment stakes, after all I know of several (probably slightly mad) people who claim not to watch tv and I'm sure if they could live without it then so could I. Other Half was away with his work at the time and I had a mental list of things to do in the evenings instead of watching tv.

On the first evening without tv I go on rather well. I had my little multi frequency radio which manages to pick up Radio 4 despite the hills and I got on with painting the kitchen. The evening flew by and it was great to have go on with some well over due diy. On the second evening I did some work and some clearing out of junk. Great again, getting those jobs done that had needed doing for months. Evening three was good too, I went into the garden and did some weeding, and a bit of cleaning inside.

By evening four I was exhausted.

Either people who choose not to watch tv have high energy levels or are happy to sit and read a book without moving very much. I have neither, I can't sit still for long without a job popping up in my head and I feel guilty reading a book when there is stuff to do.

I then had a brainwave. iPlayer on the BBC. Great, brilliant, lifesaver and energy re-booster. It seemed like the answer to everything, I could watch tv and even better only watch the programmes I like. Heaven.

Except that just like the tv signal being blocked by the hills, the same hills prevent us from having a super fast broadband connection. So watching a 30 minute programme took nearly two hours with lots of stops and pauses and often dying in the middle. It was somewhat frustrating but better than exhaustion.

I endured it for nearly two months until Other Half decided he could no longer stand weekends without tv and I gave in and bought a new satelite box.

The new box was proudly installed on the shelf under the tv. Henry didn't even seem to notice. For about four weeks.

Then one morning the puddle was back. Nooooo! The box was once again dead.

I decided that if I could live before with just iPlayer for entertainment then I could do it again. This decision was mostly influenced by lack of money and having none spare to buy yet another satelite box so in reality I had no choice.

I managed another three weeks of iPlayer before spotting a fabulous portable satelite system on Ebay. It was cheap. Very cheap. But worth a shot so I bid and won and waited for it to arrive.

Once it came I opened the box and realised that I knew absolutely nothing about satelite communications and this needed some knowledge albeit basic. I waited for Other Half to come home and we had a Saturday of dishes on poles, attached to fences, wind blowing the poles down, finding a signal but only getting Brazilian tv then loosing all signals while trying to find Sky. After several hours I remembered that Henry had only peed on the receiver box, not the dish and why didn't we connect the portable receiver to the original dish? I took cover and Other Half plugged the box in.

We had tv! Yey! 700+ channels of absolute tosh. More rubbish than we could cope with and to find the more intelligent channels was like finding the old needle in a haystack. We ended up with London local news, Yorkshire ITV, Wales BBC2 and a handful of other strange chanels but at least we had tv.

Throughout all this Henry acted no different. He was oblivious to the trouble he had caused and just seemed to watch the comings and goings of various satelite boxes with total disinterest.

After we could endure the news from Hull, Kendal, Looe and Maidstone no longer we eventually bought a third Sky box. This time I dug out and old chest that was hiding away in the workshop, rubbed it down, cleaned it up and put the tv on top. The satelite box is now way out of reach of a dogs back leg high up on a shelf above the tv. It actually looks better than it did before but we won't tell Henry that in case he tries to continue with his interior decoration career.