Always Changing The Channel

Monday is about movies. Or sometimes TV. Today TVs — so many of them!

For my 7th birthday, I got my first TV. A television set in my bedroom! This was so flash. It was black ‘n’ white, with a dial that you turned — channel 1 was 6 and channel 2 was 8, and you had to slap the side of it for the picture to stop wobbling after you changed the channel. None of this mattered at all. I HAD A TV IN MY ROOM.

I can never forget that magical day. It was my birthday on a Saturday morning — and it’s always in winter. So it was raining. Sport was cancelled. And I woke up that day to the sound of The Muppet Show (my favourite program!) Someone, mum or dad (I never found out who, though I suspect it was my dad — he always got those sorts of jobs thrust on him) had snuck into my room and turned the new-to-me telly on. The first thing I knew about it was hearing the Muppet theme tune.

Time to light the lights, alright!

I was the envy of most of the kids in my class as I recall. Spoiled rotten really.

When I was about 14 or 15 I had a VCR in my room. I would watch any of the VHS tapes we’d recorded off TV. Mostly concerts, old episodes of The Young Ones, and some favourite films (Crossroads, Commando, The Rocky Horror Show, Karate Kid, Teen Wolf…)

When I was 18, I drove myself to Wellington — moving out of home and into the wider world. My car was packed to the roof with clothes, rolled up posters, my tapes and CDs, and a small handful of records. I had a stereo. A computer. A printer. A TV trolley. Boxes of VHS tapes. And yes, a TV. By then a 14” colour with a remote. Real flash!

In the hostel, Sunday nights were movie nights in my room. Sunday mornings sometimes too. Other nights, sometimes. Even other mornings, as that first year crawled on…

For my 25th birthday, I got my first DVD player. It seemed the size of a bicycle. Or a small shed.

A couple of years later, my folks bought me a new TV — a pretty big colour TV, with a cabinet. I had just won a sales competition at work, so I’d been awarded a full home theatre system: DVD with surround speakers.

Shortly after we were married, we bought a 32” colour TV for the bedroom, with some money that was given as a present. Later we shopped around for a cheap DVD player to plug in upstairs with the new screen.

There have been other TVs in and around these. My favourite, for a while, was the red black ‘n’ white 4.5” TV/Radio/Clock that I was given when I had my tonsils out; woke up to it in a hospital bed and the TV was a gift from my grandparents — and I loved that little TV; it came with a single headphone (one ear) on a long, long lead that you could plug in and listen as you watched The Golden Girls in bed, on a school night…

Last year we bought THE BIG TV. A 65” flat screen to hang on the wall — we ended up leaving it on a stand. It has a soundbar too. We watch movies on it all the time — whether streaming or still slumming it on DVD.

Often I crack up about my trip down to Wellington in the car piled up with all that stuff; spending the best part of a day lifting gear from the basement to the third floor of the hostel, using only the stairs. And the dozens of times I shifted flat after that, and the two houses I’ve bought and moved into (one at a time of course). These big, all-day shifts, and you get the telly in place first, and position all the furniture around it.

Nowadays, a first year student arrives to their room with a laptop, or tablet. And a phone.

Movies are watched on an iPad or iPhone.

I don’t love TVs as much as my parents. They have one in most rooms in their house. Many of them are never used. But you don’t throw away a perfectly good TV set!

My life in front of so many screens. It sounds like it’s all I’ve ever done. As I write this I haven’t watched a single TV show or movie, or even looked at a screen to see anything — other than the words I’ve typed — in four days. Later tonight, I’ll be at the giant Embassy screen for a Film Society screening. Then I’ll watch waterpolo on YouTube on my TV at home.

And what was the point of all of this today, you wonder?

Good question. But if you don’t like it, you can always change the channel.