Poor reception
As you may have noticed, it's not often that I post stuff on here. The main cause being a distinct lack of free time (at least partly born of what happened two years ago! - 2 years, where did that go, eh?).

However, I do feel sufficiently riled by recent events to post something now.

We've just bought a new house. Abandoning our suburban home of five years (5 years, where did...) we've relocated to a shiny new house in the country.

The big reason for the move is that offspring # 2 is due to arrive before Christmas, and our old house had simply run out of space. So we bought a bigger house in the country. Not only is it bigger, it's also brand spanking new. Which is great - no need for immediate maintenance work, no bathroom tiles fixed to a wall by silicon sealant, no dodgy old boiler. Admittedly the house is rather beige - magnolia walls throughout, matching carpets, but at least it's a blank canvass we can decorate to our taste at our leisure without feeling the need to rapidly repaint some garish walls like last time.

However, because it's a new house, we're having to arrange for certain things to happen - rubbish collection, explaining to countless call centres that our postcode and house do actually exist even though their database is telling them otherwise, new TV aerial.

It's the last of those which is causing the biggest problems.

At our last house we had Sky+. A great system which caused us no problems whatsoever.

However, moving house meant a new dish. No problem though, as the builder has cunningly installed wiring for Sky+ into the walls of the new house, so all we needed to do was apparently get someone to stick up a dish and connect some wires and we were away.

Four weeks after moving in, we still don't have a fully functioning TV system.

The first Sky man refused to go in the loft, as it isn't boarded out. "Health & safety, innit"

The second Sky men did go in the loft (and didn't hurt themselves) and connected all the cables (which the cretin who installed them had cut off before they could stretch to go through the hole in the outside of the house), but according to the helpful Sky men, one of the cables is a dud.

So we got the electrician who installed the cables back. Turns out he is taking less responsibility than an MP embroiled in the expenses scandal:

"Hello, Sky are telling me that the aerial cable you installed is a dud."
"I'm not an aerial man"
"but you installed the cable, and it doesn't work"
"You need an aerial man"
"But it's just a cable, it runs from A-B and it doesn't work. This must be your fault."
"You need an aerial man"

The third Sky man refused to go in the loft on account of our old friends "Health & safety"

So on Monday, over four weeks after we moved in, an independent aerial man is coming out. Apparently we "wouldn't believe how much work he gets because Sky men won't go into people's lofts"...

Of course, when he turns up and tells us that the cable installed by the electrician is a dud and what needs to happen is that the cable needs chasing out, replacing and the house needs replastering, that's when the real fun will start.
- posted by Paul @ 4:00 pm