We have Freesat

Well, I’m sure that others would have carried out much more research than me (us), but arriving in our new home and finding that the T.V. aerial didn’t work came as quite a shock.

There IS an aerial, and an aerial wire, but nothing comes out of it! Bugger!!

So, once we’d begun to come out of our ‘just moved’ stupor we began to think of how we could get a T.V. signal again. We do have (at the time of writing – had!) a Humax machine that allows us to record Freeview so we were able to watch already recorded stuff, whenever we found the time.

So we found an aerial guy in the paper and called him. He came around; he fitted a Manhattan Freesat box and away he went. Well actually, it wasn’t as simple as that. 

I’d asked him to tell me why the aerial lead wouldn’t work and after a few minutes he was able to tell me that we don’t have an aerial. First of all ‘doh!’ I could have looked and seen that, but knowing that our new house had a satellite dish; I’d have thought (very wrongly) that THAT worked as an aerial – it doesn’t. He pointed out that Slaithwaite couldn’t see the Emily Moor transmitter without a 12-15 foot high aerial on the roof (we have no chimney stacks to fasten these to) and that for us to get anything at all it would have to be pointed at the Cop Hill relay, which would give us less stations and ‘some ghosting’. So when he mentioned Freesat – what could I do!

Only when he’d fitted the box (with all the resulting chopping and changing of wires) did he say ‘oh, you have a Humax’ (actually he didn’t even then, only when I asked how we would connect the new Freesat box to the Humax did he say ‘you can’t!‘). It’s not that the Humax was hidden; he’d had to move it to get to the back of the T.V. What he could have said, had he not been keen to just get one of his own units fitted was “ha – you have a Humax! That won’t work with Freesat, if you want to pause live T.V. and record programmes, you’ll need a new Humax (e.g. Freesat Recorder) – I can get you one of those and have it fitted by the day after tomorrow”.

But he didn’t.

And only belated, extensive research has found the unit we need (should have had if the research had been carried out earlier). And we need it because we’ve become used to recording the programmes we like and watching them when WE want, not when they are broadcast – and pausing them, or live T.V. while we make a cup of tea. Grrr.

Anyone got any advice on new T.V.s?

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We’ve moved

Moving house earlier this month was one of the most strenuous, stressful, scary and time consuming things I’ve done in many years. At the same time, it has been an enlightening, liberating, joyful but very tiring experience.

This is not the first time I’ve moved house, not by a long chalk, but it’s the first one since I became a sexagenarian – I was worn out right through the following week and now, two weeks later, one elbow is still giving me trouble. Tschh!

However, all the boxes are now unpacked or in the attic waiting for decisions (do we open them? do we leave them until the next move? – if there is one, or [my preferred option] do we throw them away?).

Sharon has done a magnificent job of turning the house we bought, into a home. It really does feel like we’ve lived here for ages now. I wish I had the patience 🙂

Our new home has a very modern kitchen. It’s all coloured glass, superbly made, considerately designed and yet, utterly impractical. It is lovely, don’t misunderstand me, but it’s not what I – the chef, would have designed. All except for one cupboard is too high for Sharon to easily use and some are too high for me to use regularly. So I assume that the previous occupants used them more for long-term storage than for everyday use. There are voluminous drawers under the work surfaces – they hold cutlery, crockery, ceramic cooking vessels and all of my knives and cooking tools. There’s even one that cuts around the double sink, allowing us to store cleaning products in the narrow channels. But, it seems such a shame to open one of these multi-purpose drawers to simply take out a knife – surely they will wear out/break in time. Who knows!

Having said all that, the kitchen is our new home’s focal point and I love it. It is huge; it is full width of the house and half its depth. The fitted cooking appliances are either Smeg or Neff, so there’s no lack of quality there. We’re currently researching new appliances to fit in too.

We’ve always had a scarcity of fridge space and I’ve previously used up to three small freezers to accommodate the cooking I do. We want to start again with cold storage, so began by looking at ‘American’ fridge-freezers. But they are not like American fridge-freezers! Certainly not like the ones I’ve seen at Gail’s house(s), all of which have vast spaces that can store all manner of groceries and ‘stuff’. We therefore look like settling on buying one of each – a larder fridge and a compatible (same size, same look) freezer. We’ll see.

Since leaving Linthwaite in 1996, I’ve not lived in a house where I’ve had to climb a full set of stairs. I have lived in bungalows, ground floor flats or more recently a split level house where no more than six or seven steps were needed to be climbed at a time, to any floor – so now that we have a wide Victorian style staircase to climb every time we go to bed (or the loo) – we can relish the thought of maintaining our fitness. As long as our knees hold out. 🙂

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