How to break everything in sight

A few weeks ago, in the middle of watching Lost, my television stopped working pretty much without warning.

As the weather was somewhat stormy at the time, our first thought was there had been a power surge and the switch had tripped.

This was not the case.

Then we thought perhaps the fuse in the plug had blown. So we put the fuse in a different plug and it worked fine. All the other appliances seemed to be working okay, so eventually we picked up the television, moved it onto the kitchen table and plugged it into a different socket. It still didn't work, and as it was still under warranty, we called up the good folk at Argos and demanded they fix it (okay, I asked nicely and they arranged a time when a man could come out and have a look at it).

As we weren't about to spend an evening without television (yes, I am being slightly sarcastic) we plugged in HFs old telly which has to have the on switch wedged into the on position all the time otherwise it cuts out and set that up, and carried on with the rest of the evening.

At about 2am I was awoken by an almighty crash coming from the kitchen.

I ran in, naked, convinced there were noisy burglars in the house (not sure how I would deal with them in my naked state, but at least I would have had the element of surprise).

The television which is a big bastard of a thing had broken one of the table legs and crashed to the floor. Somehow, there was no damage to the screen itself.

This left us in something of a quandry. The tv had genuinely broken, unaided. But there was bound to be some internal evidence that it had been dropped on the floor, which I suspect would invalidate our warranty.

Anyway, we decided to brave it out and if questioned on the matter, just lie. Not that I'm great at lying, but I was damned if I was about to let some minor accident cheat me out of my free repair job.

When the man arrived, I explained what had happened, omitting the middle of the night "incident". He told me he thought he knew what the problem was and proceeded to take my television to pieces - which was surprisingly interesting, most of the inside of a tv is just air - and replaced one small diode.

It didn't work.

He did some cunning circuit related tests then ummed and aahed for a while then told me he had to take it away and do some other stuff. Possibly rebuild the circuit board, I'm not sure.

About a week later, I got a call. They had fixed the machine. When I tentatively asked what the problem had been, they told me several parts had to be replaced.

Oops.

Anyway, as I may have mentioned earlier, the table sustained some damage in this whole debacle. A makeshift arrangement (jamming the leg back on and hoping it would stay there) was reached in the interim, but following moving house, it became clear this was not an entirely satisfactory arrangement. As in, if you put any weight on that side of the table, it falls over. That includes sitting at it to read/eat. Although you can still use the other side of the table.

Closer examination suggests that the damage to the table leg is pretty well terminal. So I'm now in the market for a second hand table with all four legs fully functioning...

It's a real pain in the arse having possessions, they break and you have to get them fixed or replaced. Maybe I should go and live in a tent or something and eat my dinner from a leaf with my hands sitting cross-legged around an open fire. Or maybe not.

More on that story later.