My family received a lovely 40-inch plasma screen TV from Santa this year. Our chimney was a bit of a tight squeeze though, so Dad pulled some festive strings and got it delivered free with John Lewis. God bless middle class values. The reason for the new telly was because the other one went and broke last year. I won’t beat about the bush - I was a bit disappointed with the lack of drama it died with. There were no explosions, flames or Carbon Monoxide emissions one would expect from a telly on its way out. The people on Eastenders just went a bit green. So purely for that reason, we haven’t tried to fix it. We took it to the tip instead.
The tip is in the middle of an industrial estate in the heart of Southend, surrounded by small, failing businesses with rubbish logos. The only one that isn’t failing is Keymed, a dominating glass and metallic building that my old girlfriend’s Dad more or less owned. It makes medical equipment used in hospitals and other places, like dentists and that. She did work experience there once and broke a two million pound medical machine. They put her on CD packaging after that.
Also near the tip is a carpenters, a marble dealer, and directly opposite, a Jewish cemetery. This makes me feel uncomfortable. I always thought it a bit tactless that they decided to place a Jewish cemetery just across the road from the local dump. Them poor Jews. God forbid the day someone gets it all horribly, horribly wrong, “I’m sorry to hear about your loss Mrs. Freedman, but we just don’t know how Marc ended up in Glass and Plastics.”
The tip really isn’t the ideal place you want to find yourself in. Everything smells funny and the whole place looks and feels grubby. The crushers look like ATATs fresh from Star Wars and the “Recycling Advisors” walking round are about as likely to help as Bin Laden in a charity shop. Nonetheless they still took our shit telly. We both agreed there’s no way they’ll let that go without trying to fix it first, and to be honest they’re welcome to it. Even if they can’t get it working, I’m sure it’ll make a wonderful bathmat for somebody.
The TV we’ve got up and running now works perfectly fine and everybody’s happy. We can hear what they’re saying at the same time they say it now. We don’t have to pretend we’re watching a badly dubbed Japanese action film. The people on Eastenders are still green, though. I’m starting to think they’re just like that.
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