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Channel surfing

Created:
8 August 2008
Written by:
Bernard Jones

SUNDAY 6 JULY: New balls, please

This is the time of year when Eunice likes to invite vegan pal Irmgard and wheelie bin-fixated neighbour Daphne Hanson-Hart over to watch television. They plan to drool over two taciturn hairy-legged Europeans smashing tennis balls at each other. Leaving them in a strawberry and Pimms-fuelled orgy of thwock (ooh!) and thwock (aah!) I walk Nasdaq the dog, or Nasdog, along deserted streets. From under a hedge he finds an old tennis ball, and after a 10-minute game of 'fetch' in the park I suddenly have an idea.

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On our return, I tiptoe around the ogling cronies and take Nasdog through to the garden. There in the shed I find 15 faded and shrunken tennis balls, mostly from the days when I attempted to chivvy a 13-year-old Jemima out of the house and away from an unhealthy interest in popular crooning groups. That of course failed as soon as I pulled a muscle in my back, which was about 15 minutes into our first practice.

Now, though, these balls have a use in my attempt to to recreate the monkey-and-darts random share picking experiment. If I just write the name of a market sector on each ball, and throw them from a bucket down the garden I will be able to get Nasdog to retrieve one. It takes a good half hour to mark them up using a felt-tip, all the while watched by the slobbering and overexcited dog. I'm just about ready, when Eunice emerges from the conservatory.

"Bernard, it's your mother on the phone. She says her television's stuck on CBeebies but she wants to watch Rod Laver and Billie-Jean..."

"Oh God. I've told her time and again to change channels with the remote, and not to touch the connections on the back. She'll electrocute herself."

"Look. Can you come and talk to her? She's driving me barmy. And Nadal's got two set points. Oh, and would you put the kettle on when you come in? And look, Nasdog's done something."

So I stopped what I was doing, went inside, spoke to my loopy mother and made the tea. Later, I would clear up after Jem's dog. What a life. Come on, Bernard, are you really to spend the rest of it at the beck and call of women? Almost certainly, yes.

MONDAY 7 JULY: Consumer electronics 1955-style

Spent an infuriating day round at my mother's. She complained she missed the tennis because the TV set blew up.

"I want a British TV next time. This Japanese stuff is rubbish," Dot said, looking at her 10-year-old Sony. All attempts to convey the importance of Japanese just-in-time manufacturing, a superior industrial ethos and the technological dominance of this sophisticated nation were lost on my mother. To her, the Japanese were still building railways across Burma using PoW labour, and trying to take India from our Empire. Perhaps that is why she stabbed the television.

"No TV is going to be happy about having a screwdriver jammed into the air vent. You've got to stop doing things like that," I said, inspecting the partially-melted back cover of the tube.

"I was trying to change the channel."

"Mum, if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times you've got to use the remote. You can't change channel like you used to on a 1955 Bush."

"But it doesn't work, Bernard. Look." She pointed the remote at the screen and pressed several buttons randomly.

"It's not going to work now because the TV's broken, isn't it? Besides, you're holding the remote control back to front," I said.

"But how can I tell? It looks the same both ways."

"No it doesn't, Mum, hold it so that the writing's the right way up. Look." I showed her how to hold the device.

She took it from me and pressed several buttons. "Well, it doesn't work any better your way round."

"Of course it doesn't now! That's because the bloody TV's broken. As I just told you, you stupid woman!"

"Bernard, there's no need to swear. If you'd not lost your temper, you wouldn't have broken it, now would you?"

At this point I really did lose my temper and kicked the TV hard, at which point it fell off its stand and onto me.

Close of Play: Waiting in A&E to have my foot bandaged. The fellow next to me is reading the evening paper which shows FTSE around 5400. One of those chartist chappies said we might get a bounce here. I do hope so. I'm down 23 per cent this year, and have hardly any cash left to buy bargains.

MORE FROM THE SAGE OF SUBURBIA...

Read more of Bernard's musings at his IC home page.

Write to him at bernard.jones@ft.com

You can buy the two Bernard Jones books at a discount in the IC bookstore.

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