Shine It On

Went to Leighton Town's friendly at AFC Dunstable - actually held inside the ground, thank goodness. Leighton fielded a lot of trialists, drawing 2-2, but the place was well worth the visit thanks to the friendly barmaids, the Olympic swimming on the big screen (we saw Michael Jamieson win his silver medal during the half-time break) and the excellent tea bar serving 'Bestie Burgers' and 'Barry's Fries' (both delicious), named in tribute to Dunstable Town's most famous former player and former manager respectively.

Handy Man

My landlady’s handyman solved the TV problem at first glance. What was needed was to plug the aerial lead into the ‘TV Booster Signal’ box on the wall, then use another RF female-to-male cable (good job the spare one I ordered on Amazon turned up this morning) to connect the booster box to the telly.

One oddity, that my landlady had warned me about, is that our village is in Bedfordshire, so we ought to get BBC East (western edition) and ITV Anglia, but instead we get BBC Oxford and ITV Meridian. Clearly the Oxford transmitter has muscled in with a stronger signal than the Sandy Heath one, despite the latter being a mile or so nearer to us. It feels a little strange watching someone else’s local news, but after three days of no telly at all, I’d gladly have accepted the Scottish or Channel Islands service.

And, on the bright side, it soon occurred to me that if we get BBC Oxford TV, we should surely be able to tune in to BBC Radio Oxford. Hallelujah – we can, so I will be continuing to listen to Dave Cash through a radio rather than a computer. Happy days.