COMETH THE HOUR.....

A couple of weeks ago I had a moan about things being far too complicated these days and I cited the examples of cars, mobile phones and televisions.   At the time, our television had suffered a terminal meltdown and we had to go and buy a new one.   We were promised delivery round about 20th/24th of August but it was not until the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday (yesterday) that it finally arrived.

It was just a deliver and go job - I was left with a big box containing the television set and all the gubbins that went with it and given the task of putting it together and making it work.   In the shop when we ordered it, the nice young man asserted that, although the new TV was a high end, hi-tech, state-of-the-art, ocean going, sooper-dooper, cutting edge version,  it was nevertheless a simple process to plug it in and get it going.  "A child of three could do it," he confirmed.

Where`s a child of three when you need one?   I decided to take it step by step, read the `instructions` carefully, take my time and not be rushed into what might well have been a challenging task.  So, off I went and after a bit of a struggle on my own I managed to get the legs on the right way round and sit the TV on its stand.   Next, plugging it in was OK as was fixing the various leads from things like the Sky box and the DVD player into what I hoped were the right holes in the back of the TV.

Turned it on - it worked !!   Well, I then reached the bit where you are presented with more options than the players Manchester United are reported to be about to sign.  I managed a couple of steps along the way and then got to a bit which seemed beyond my octogenarian understanding.  Hardly surprising for one whose first look at a TV set was back in 1953 when my Dad bought a 9-inch black and white set which had a magnifying glass strapped to the screen to make it look bigger - and then there were only a couple of stations to choose from.  (He said he bought it so that my Mum could watch the Coronation whereas the reality was that he got it in time for the Matthews Cup Final that year.)

So, I`m stuck - I have two or three choices;  panic, give in, or go next door and see if my neighbour - a mere slip of a lad in his late 50s - could help.   Of course, being the accommodating soul he is and clearly well versed in the ways of modern technology, he was able to guide me through the litany of options as they appeared on the screen.  Some have been postponed for lack of password recollection but we might come back to those and see if we can get Netflix, Google, Youtube, Disney, BBC 2 and all the other goodies that seem available these days.   (All I really want to do is watch the cricket which I managed to do last evening when Lancashire had a narrow victory over Derbyshire in the T20 Blast - so God is in her Heaven after all.)

But I was grateful to my young neighbour for his patience, his understanding and his concern for the mental wellbeing of this out of time next door pilgrim meandering along life`s chequered path.  Neighbourhood Watch is alive and well, thank goodness.....but I do wish that things were not quite so complicated.