Warning: This blog is a sad tale of love that ends in misery. Its a tale of the greatest love known to human kind. That of a man for his telly. I finally collected my TV from my old flat last night. Its been a long time since we were together, plagued with difficult to’s and fro’s and meetings. We’ve had some good times over the years. I’ve watched some great things through that telly, my Spaced and Jam DVDs, Indiana Jones 1-3 (NOT FOUR) and who can ever forget the wii or Xbox hours or the first time I plugged my blu-ray player in and watched the Dark Knight? Not me, that’s for sure. If we had a ‘tune’ it would be the Hans Zimmer soundtrack to the bit where Bale is on the converted batbike fucking things up royally. Sigh, such very good times. Of course there were harsh times. If it wasn’t for my telly I may never have accidentally scarred my life with a clip of Horne and Corden’s sketch show or various unnecessary skimming over excerpts of morons in several BB houses, slowly ebbing away at my intelligence. But all good relationships have arguments don’t they? And how many of them allow you to end the bickering with a simple press of a button? Not many which is why my telly is special. Not many girlfriends tell you when a program is on that you may have forgotten about whilst watching another channel. No. Well ok. Some do.
So when life changed and my telly was left behind, things were pretty hard. There were the initial custody talks and I fought and I fought to declare it as mine. We’d been through more, it loved me the bestest. Who else bought it digital cable? Me. Only me. Who else programmed it and tuned it in to all the channels? Just the Tiernan. That’s right. If telly could walk it would have, at several times, leapt off its wall mantle and hugged me. Of course it would have to have legs and arms to do that and I’m not sure I’d love a telly as much if it was all alive and creepy. During the leaping of the wall process I’d have queried how it would have undone all the bolts and screws itself and then what sort of witch craft had possessed it to go all Evil Edna on me, and I’d have long been out the door before it could wrap its terrestrial arms around me. So eventually it was decided the TV was mine. Then came the collection of the telly. It had to stay there a while, while the flat was still occupied, so I bided my time. Made plans for when we’d be together. Bought some blu-rays, borrows some X-Box games. So finally when the day rolled around for me to collect it, I turned up all ready for the big day. And then very quickly realised I hadn’t brought the right screw driver to take it off the wall. Then my parking permit outside ran out. I left, empty handed, sans television. Why didn’t you leap off the wall Edna? Why?
Yesterday I learnt my lesson and returned in the dead of night with my brother, bag packed with various wrenches, screwdrivers and something I found in the tool cupboard that looked like it could pull a dragon’s teeth out if you needed to. I wouldn’t need that one, but I was worried about late night dragon toothache call outs, not thinking of course about the dangers of getting a fire breathing lizard to say ‘aaaah’. I also like picking up tools that look cool. Essentially we couldn’t have looked more suspicious heading into a derelict house with a bunch of metal DIY weaponry with all intent of taking an expensive TV. We swooped in, got slightly distracted by a hilarious book about hats I forget I had, then quickly dismantled the wall mount grabbed the telly and escaped into the wind. I raced home, placed the telly on its stand and considered dancing with it a bit, but then realised I might drop it and that would be neglect and I may lose custody again. So instead I sat down and awaited TV Times.
I looked to plug it in, searching around the room assuming I had collected it on a previous visit but all looking was to no avail. I tried using the Xbox plug to see if it was the same, knowing full well this would only deny me using both at the same time were it work. It was as fruitless as a Greggs. My heart sank, realising the plug was clearly still back at the flat. I sat on the edge of the bed pressing the on button the remote control like a stuck record. Maybe this just isn’t meant to be? Cue tiny violin.
One day telly. One day.
