Work it Baby!

My telly's bust.

I have used every available repair technique I know of, including waggling all the cables, unplugging them, putting them back in, waggling them again, and then shrugging with all my might, but even this formidable technical arsenal hasn't resolved the problem.

It might very well be unsolvable.

So far, I've not been massively bothered because programmes have become as tedious as ringworm lately. There's only so much amateur dancing, amateur singing, amateur cooking, amateur documentary making, amateur lottery ball picking and amateur news reading I can take before I start to whisper angry words at the TV and it begins to whisper back.

The lack of the Cbeebies channel might be a problem for my son, as Uncle Telly is a useful babysitter, usually available and non-complaining, just asking for an occasional dust and the undivided attention of our mentally stagnating offspring.

Still, it stops him getting kidnapped in the park, which is apparently what happens to children these days if they so much as glance out the front door unattended.

This lack of telly has meant we've had to find alternative ways of passing the time.

Completely unfair.

So, before I am again forced to go out in this pleasant sunshine and entertain my child by boringly showing him birds in the hedgerows, feeding ducks on the river and having a walk in the fields with a football, I will share a few words about technology.

It don't work.

Lot's of things don't work in this life.

I'm not talking about stuff that claims to do something but obviously doesn't, like homeopathy or Derek Acorah, but things that are designed and built according to genuine scientific and mechanical principles, based on years of sound theory and practise, and then decide to ignore all that and become nothing more than an expensive paperweight or desk ornament. Or, even more annoyingly, they only partially work so you don't know whether to replace them or not. Are you supposed to keep the toaster which doesn't pop up? The phone extension that only has a fifty-fifty chance of being in range? The DVD player that plays but doesn't record?

Although it's all technology, everywhere, that's mostly useless, a couple of more specific examples probably wouldn't go amiss.

Scart cables are a major source of annoyance for me. If it doesn't work, it's because it's a cheap one. If it still doesn't work it's because it's not made of gold. If it still doesn't work, it's because I have an incompatible piece of hardware, which makes me wonder why there's a scart-shaped hole in the back of it. If it still doesn't work it's because I haven't used the correct amounts of adder's fork and blindworm's sting, and my lizard's leg and howlet's wing are past their spell by date.

Anyway, it's always my fault apparently.

What about cars? They now have big grey plastic boxes where the engine used to be, and more processing power than the Apollo missions, so they're bound to go wrong on a regular basis. You can't just open up the bonnet and expect to fix an errant pipe or dodgy sprocket, because you need to get a man in very clean overalls to plug a laptop in just to identify the problem in the first place. That'll be ninety quid please. More if you want me to download the repair as well.

If I download anything from the internet, it won't work. I've never bought a computer game that you could just load up and play. There has always been hours of forum scanning and occasional phoning up of some sighing twenty-two year old obese virgin* who sighs at your inability to load up Spore, and eventually there is a fix which is so complicated it would've been easier to use the Rosetta Stone as a trouble-shooting manual.

Annoyingly, most people have learnt to adapt and overcome, teaching themselves about hard and software to a standard that might have amazed a younger version of themselves. I know computer helpline geeks have a field day with ignorant callers thinking the mouse is a pedal, and wondering where the "any" key is, but most of us now know how to turn something off and then on again, which is the basis for almost all computer repairs.

Even typing this blog entry, the copy and paste function won't work, so when I decided to replace a paragraph a bit further down the page, I had to write the whole lot out again.

Of course, mixing technology is simply going to exacerbate the situation. Connecting a mobile phone to the computer seems to be like trying to get a lion to mate successfully with an outboard motor, an unpleasant experience for all involved. Especially the lion.

On the rare occasion when something technological does its job and operates exactly (or as near as durn it) as it's supposed to, I am so overjoyed that I think it's the greatest thing ever devised, which has the paradoxical effect of making me so grateful for its normal functioning that I become momentarily re- smitten with gadgets. Then, rather than throwing out anything with a power source, I'm all enthusiastic about technology again.

For this reason, I thought I'd end with a picture off of t'internet which shows a state of the art DVD writer:


Mweh.

*He sounded obese anyway. And virginal.