Aerials big reception

There are times when I am convinced the state is controlling me in Orwellian style, other times I think I am just being paranoid, often it is just plain annoying but most of the time I have no control over what I watch on TV.

The aerial and I have a tempestuous relationship to say the least, over which I have no control. It decides what I should watch and what channels are available but with little or no consistency. Every channel has its own position ranging from on top of the television to laying on its side in the doorway. There is a tendency for the most inconvenient places and the most precarious sometimes it just wants to see another part of the room but you can never predict where it will be. What is BBC 1 on Monday will be channel 4 on Wednesday with no way of telling. There there are just too many variables to factor in to make educated guesses everything from the occupants of the flat above being home to the whether we are cooking in the kitchen all play a part. I would like to think that if you could possibly list all the variants you might be able to create an equation to determine the optimum position but then you discount the ghost in the machine. There are times Aerial likes to play little games where reception is perfect until you are two thirds of the way back to the sofa when it mysteriously looses all signal or the one where the only place is 2' off the ground leaving the person sent to fix the situation with the king Solomon type decision of the other persons enjoyment and their own aching arm and my personal favorite is where Big Cheese will play around up to the point of complete frustration only for me to take over placing it in the exact place it was first positioned and gain (for about 15 minutes) reception of unparalleled clarity.

This never used to be a problem in the good old days of analogue technology. There were many times I would watch the same episode of 'Jamie an home' in black and white which would take on an all together different dimension allowing me to watch without the knowing familiarity you get from seeing the same thing twice. The picture would crackle the sound would dip but these were all just endearing quirks that I grew to love. I think that Aerial was a little put out when I introduced it to the digital box. Maybe it was its boasty ways of being able to pick up hundreds of channels or its sporting of green and red LED technology that meant this was never going to work, as they now seem to want to be as far apart as possible. It was right from the start the two never really got on leaving me to pick up pieces of the broken relationship.

So why don't I just get rid and maybe invest in something flat and 30" wide with stuff built in. Well I would be lying if I said the thought had never crossed my mind, but we have been through so much together. Three seasons of Lost, practically every Jean Claude Van Damme movie (on channel 5) and how we loved those crazy characters on Top Gear. To get rid now would be like kicking out your loyal dog because it's old and started to pee on the carpet. There have been good times and as long as you're the spectator watching the other person scramble, with a desperation only someone missing the show they have waited all week to see can muster it is pretty funny, while not being able to get reception on a channel showing that chick flick is no bad thing.

There is no doubt Aerial is more than an aerial and the ghost in this machine has all the personality you could ask for but if you want to watch TV don't mention the D word.