Sorry about the interruption in services. I’m currently recovering from one of those nasty bacteria-laden infection things that killed off all the martians in War of the Worlds, but has so far left me with merely an ongoing fever, an inability to concentrate for more than thirty seconds, and a strong tendency to begin every conversation with “Oooh, I’m very ill, you see”.
It was worth the wait though. Look! Picture of a really old TV licence!
We stumbled on this because Cory was chortling at the modern equivalent sitting on Manar’s desk we’re both staying at for XCOM. You need to pay a small annual tax to own a TV in the UK, a fact which most North Americans generally find terribly amusing. The tax goes to fund the BBC, which is free for all, has no advertising and charges no subscription.
Actually, this older forebear is not a licence for owning a TV, it’s a licence for building one. Which makes me think of my father, who built his neighbourhood their first television, and put it in an box that used to hold oranges. And built me my first computer when I was eight, and put it a cardboard box, with a hole cut out for the keyboard, and plugged it into a ready-made television, and lifted me up onto his shoulders and carried me into a new world.