Saturday morning, I drop Holly off to work and decide to take a drive down to Kingston to go and pay a visit to Richer Sounds.

You see, for the last year (at least), I have been after a multi-region DVD recorder with Freeview and a HD upscaler. And after a quick search on the Richer Sounds website, I found one reasonably priced at £150.

What with it being Christmas weekend, I don’t really want to be in one of London’s busiest shopping towns for too long. I get there and it’s not open just yet, so to kill some time I get a McDonalds breakfast and take a stroll down the highstreet. During my stroll I stop to watch a very good group of musicians called Borderline and purchase their CD (it’s not often I buy CDs from street performers, but seriously, they were that good!). I stroll back to Richer Sounds and purchase the said DVD recorder and an AV receiver.

After a visit to my family, I get home about 3.00 pm. I plug in all the equipment, fetch Spider-man 3 and test out my new set up. And after 10 minutes, my TV gives up.

The picture flickers, it goes from green, to red, to blue, basically all the colours of the rainbow. I know it’s not the new equipment, because, the TV has been playing up quite a bit recently, but it was never this severe.

I switch the TV off and try it again later. The problem persists. B*gg*r…

Holly comes home and the conversation goes a little like this:

“We can’t go without a TV over Christmas!” Holly says.
“I know!! There’s a Doctor Who episode on and the Extra’s Christmas special!”
“What are we gonna do? WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO!?!?”
“I don’t know! I’m skint until pay day and I wont be able to afford a new TV anyway!!”
“oh my god, we might have use a credit card!”

You can get a sense of dread coming over us. In the interest of our psychological safety, we decide to drop the subject and carry on with our plans (night out with friends, dressed in Santa outfits…).

The next day, in a slightly hung over state, I zombie walk over into the living room and go to switch on the TV. Still nothing…

After having the discussion above, again, we go into Sutton. We need to get some bits anyway.

Not being one who has a keen interest in shops such as Primark and Bon Marché, I opt to look at TVs. I go to the Sony shop, Argos and Currys.

After losing faith in the High Street store, we walk into the ridiculously overpriced Panasonic shop in the St Nicholas center. I’ve never owned a Panasonic TV, have never been able to afford it.
Now this is where my opinion of the place changed.

A member of staff came up to me and asked if he could help, so I advised him of our situation and just said “I need a TV, that is in stock and I need to pay with interest free credit, as we have no money right now”. He also advised me that the product has a 5 year warrenty (something that is very appealing after what has just happened to my 2 year old TV).

He shows me a TV, at a reasonable price and then advises me its 12 months interest free credit – effectively, we have one year to pay it off. All I need to do is show him some form of address id, something like a utility bill. After a quick drive home to get these documents and a quick drive back to the shop, we are in the process of purchasing our TV.

Last night, I turn the flat upside down and set up the TV… So Holly could watch Elf and CSI NY and I could just sit there, shattered…