The Aerial Horror

I know many people in Britain who dislike the standard phrase of American service workers: “Have a nice day.” They object to it as a false, insincere pleasantry. I don’t object to this – at least not from Americans. Having visited the country I get the impression that if I did have a nice day it would give them a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. In Britain it would be a different matter as most service workers tend to give the impression that whatever interaction they are forced to make with the paying punter is at best a distraction to the bloody awfulness of the rest of their daily toil. In fact, if they were to give any sort of heartfelt valediction it would be: “Burn in Hell, you bastard!”

An example of the can’t-be-arsedness of British firms happened to me this week when I made an appointment for an aerial firm to fix the mangled mess of antenna on my roof. Initially, they said that they would come around on Saturday afternoon to have a look and give me a quote. After a couple of hours they phoned back and asked if they could come out on Monday morning as they were very busy. Fair enough, I could work from home and wait for them. Then, on Monday morning, they phoned again to ask if Monday afternoon would be OK. I was going to be in all day so I could manage this but I was beginning to become suspicious as to why a local tradesman couldn’t just pop around and have a look on the way to another job. It was then that I noticed that I had fallen foul to a Google inspired scam. Whilst their web page and URL indicated that they were local they were actually a large national  franchise. They phoned again in the afternoon to ask if Tuesday would be OK – I cancelled there and then.

In a fit of pique I decided that I would replace the aerials myself and headed down to the local builder’s merchants to buy the bits and pieces I needed for the repair. All of this forgets the fact that I am terrified of going up on the roof in the first place. I had bought everything at this point so on Saturday afternoon I ventured up on to the roof to sort the damage out. In fact, I could never have imagine quite what a concoction of mangled metal and spaghettified wires I would find. The fortunate thing was that the chimney lashing was still intact which saved me a task and after removing much of the other mess with bolt cutters it was a relatively simple task to point the aerials in the direction of Black Hill transmitters. There is also a fairly good view of Falkirk from up there as well.

So that was job done. The reception is far better than we had previously and the aerials look very new and shiny at the moment. I just hope they survive the next storm intact. Unfortunately, I will have to replace Raymond’s aerial s well as the boom has completely rusted through and bent over. I was tempted to do this on Saturday but the wind and rain were indicating a rapid retreat was the order of the day. When I got down I was shaking – initially, I thought, from the cold and wind but in truth from the utter horror of spending 2 hours on the roof.

At least that was sorted by a glass of whisky and settling down to watch The Crimson Horror – the latest episode of Doctor Who. This is the second episode written by Mark Gatiss for this series and, whilst I didn’t think it was good as Cold War, it was still a great amount of fun with the seemingly regular cast of Madam Vastra, Jenny and Strax (the potato one) investigating a series of disappearances in Victorian Royston Vasey. Very much played for laughs (the Thomas Thomas quip had me laughing out loud when I worked it out) I was left with one really depressing thought: Whatever has happened to Emma Peel?