Mixed reception for countryside living

We moved house last month. I now live in what can best be described as a rural location.

Even without opening my eyes in the morning, I am reminded of the countryside just outside my window by a wildlife chorus made up of bleating, tweeting, squawking and the occasional moo. Beats the sound of traffic any day, although what engine noise we do get has a much higher percentage of agricultural vehicle notes than I’m accustomed too, interspersed with hints of trains.

Just like any modern nerd, prior to the move I exhaustively investigated how to connect myself to the outside world from the middle of nowhere. Clearly, broadband is now right up there on the list of life’s essential requirements – somewhere just after air and water, but probably jostling for position with warmth and food.

Much to my delight, it turned out that our new pad is on the edge of the B4RN area – meaning the availability of fibre optic cable, not just to a nearby green cabinet, but right through the wall into our house. If your techy-person skills don’t have you fretting about how many MBs upload speed you can get, then imagine it like this; if your average broadband were water, most suppliers ship is down a huge pipe, but at the last minute switch to delivering it into your house via a straw with a kink in it.

Instead, I can listen to the wildlife outside whilst getting hosed down by a stream of high pressure data that has my computer trembling. Stream high definition video? Yup. VOIP phone? Hell yeah. Download music so fast, I have to check it’s actually done it? Pow! I’ve apparently got faster speeds than at my employer’s offices.

So far, so not-quite-sure-what-to-do-with-it-all-good. Next up was the investigation into what TV channels I was likely to get. At our previous palace, our aerial delivered a somewhat limited selection of Freeview channels into our gogglebox. Mrs G was always bitterly disappointed not to get non-stop American action drama, and I pined for the amusing stuff (and endless repeats of Top Gear) on Dave.

After tuning in our TV after the big move, we were startled to get all of that and more. So many channels, that there was a risk of the battery in the remote going flat before you could scroll through all of them. Happy days! Until Monday. That was the day the horrifying words “No signal” appeared. Eek. It’ll be temporary, we thought. The aerial hadn’t been stolen by boisterous sheep, and there were no obvious dangly cables. We checked all our connections. Tried different cables. Nothing. No NCIS marathon. No vintage episodes of QI.

On checking with neighbours, we were helpfully told that the signal is very weak where we are, and gets affected by the weather easily. Ah.

We thought it was all going a bit too swimmingly. At least my ridiculously fast internet connection is allowing me to research how I get Freesat instead. The novelty of staring at sheep wears off surprisingly quickly.

Technology 1 : Rural Location 1

I suppose I could go outside...

This post first appeared as the lead piece in my column/page in The Mail and News & Star, on the 11th of May 2018. The title was altered slightly to "Mixed reception for country life".

TV viewing update: Now have a Freesat box - connected it all up today and it seems to be working. I thought "Great! Now I can watch the Spanish GP highlights on Channel 4 later!". Went through all the channels trying to find 4 in HD... after a bit of online research, it turns out it's the one main channel NOT available in HD on Freesat. Jeez...

(CD A-Z: The RCD Blues Collection.)

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