The storm over the tv

There wasn't actually that much of a storm, just a few grumblings and thundery type rumblings and the threat of rain. Mr11 wrote a note back to the antenna asking it to please come back home, and that he promised not to watch too much tv, but to no avail!

What a feeling of freedom. I love it. No more having to be ready or we'll miss the beginning of a show, no more having to change the channel quickly but not quickly enough because the ads are indecent even with the volume down, no more hedonistic consumer fest paraded before our eyes constantly. What bliss to see the box in its box (wooden furniture piece with doors that close), and two young boys sitting in the lounge room reading books instead of vegging out in front of the box. Mr 10 is reading the Alex Rider series, and Mr 11-nearly-12 is a third of the way through The Return of The King.

Our TV antenna has gone on holiday!

The storm has not yet broken, but it will! Our tv antenna has gone on holiday: it even left a farewell note in an appropriate digital style script. We can still watch DVDs and videos, but the tv part of tv with all its awful ads and consumer worship of stuff, is finally deactivated. Yay!!

Arr and Ess are fine with this idea, and I think that Lor won't mind too much, but Jae and Sea are not going to like it one bit. How, precisely, can a nearly 12 year old and a 10 year old be expected to grow up whole, sane, and above all accepted by their peers, without tv?! Saturday mornings will never be the same, and I'm looking forward to that. We shall weather the storm and be better people for it. Stay tuned to hear how it goes, and wish me well!

The only thing that may bring the antenna and cabling back from holiday may just be..... Doctor Who. Can I live without seeing Doctor Who on tv? I've watched the show almost ever since we got a B&W box when I was 8 (I had to help pay for it to convince my parents we should have one), and loved it, talked about it, bit my nails in front of it, laughed at it, enjoyed it, ever since.
Ah well, I tell myself, there's always youtube.

I've banned ads when my children were watching tv for some time now; if I heard an ad from another room the kids knew I'd be in there asap to turn off the box. So they've become fast at either changing channels so quickly that the sound doesn't register for a bit, or at muting the ads before I get to the room. When the ads for things or other shows were on, it really felt like manipulation and often like filth; definitely like something I did not want in my house.

Such a lot of RUBBISH has come through that box into our home even with all my efforts to reduce that, and it's such a lot of bother to try and police it, I feel really at peace about the idea of not having it at all. My sister did this some time back when hers broke, but now that she has a new screen she also has no desire to bring commercialism back into her home. Honestly folks, we are SO much better off without it.