SO....what's been happening??

An interesting and fairly packed week in Nowhere-in-France for me last week. Or, as I sometimes call it, “the land the internet forgot”. I manage without the internet whilst in France, apart from checking for e-mails on my phone or falling upon the kindness of friends for a WiFi connection. The other alternative is McDonald’s, and I really HAVE to be desperate to darken their door.

Last week, however, N-i-F also became the land that TV forgot.  

Whilst I am by no means a TV addict, I do find it useful for keeping in touch with the world outside, and when I’m alone in France I enjoy curling up on the sofa to watch the odd programme.  Last week, however, the Freesat box decided to die a death.  No UK TV for me…

 Image: Wikipedia

“What’s wrong with French TV?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s like this: we can’t get French TV. There’s a perfectly serviceable ariel on the roof, but it’s never managed to convey whatever signal it receives from up there to down below. I did think that, with the advent of digital TV in France I might have a chance of getting something, but having borrowed the neighbours’ French free-to-air digital receiver and plugged it all in, it showed me what I could be watching, alongside a blue screen with the words of doom “pas de signal”.

Despite being a woman with vertigo, desperation saw me leaving the house via the bathroom window, sidling along the roof like spiderwoman (well, a sort of “off duty” spiderwoman  in shorts and a t-shirt), gripping the chimney and climbing onto the garage roof, and thence to the satellite dish, in order to do as exhorted by the error message on the TV and “check all cables and connections”. They were all fine. I checked, several times.  Don’t worry, I had the foresight and common sense to execute this manoeuvre in the company of visiting friends, in order that if things went wrong then my decomposing remains would not later be discovered on the patio below by a passing neighbour. One friend was stationed by the TV looking for signs of life, whilst the other shuttled back and forth in the garden, passing information between us and limbering up in case called upon to rush forward and catch my plummeting body.

Having read several times on the internet prior to the event that “the French” (for whom many British expat residents seem to believe themselves the official spokesperson) would not give a hoot about the Diamond Jubilee, and that any slightly patriotic gesture on the part of British expats would result in shame being brought upon the rest by association, I had to spend the rest of my stay confessing that I had no idea how wonderful it all was, as I didn’t see any of it. My unofficial and unwilling straw poll of “the French”, comprising most of my friends, the couple who run the tabac, the boulanger, three men in the bar and my neighbours, seems to indicate that they did give at least a small hoot, and were somewhat surprised that I couldn’t add any comments or observations of my own. 

TH will be present on the next visit. I’m relying on him (and on the purchase of a new box) to fix the problem. A week without TV is fine. Three months without TV is NOT.