TV Licence: or Dear BBC no 2.
Dear BBC,
I have been informed that despite letting you know that I still don’t have a tv so do not need a licence you will continue to contact me every two years incase my circumstances change. Two years. I suppose you do not wish me to feel harassed, so feel that two years will be a good time, enough time for things to have changed maybe and for me to have bought a tv and somehow forgotten that I need a licence? But circumstances change so quickly so I thought I would let you know each week that I still do not require one. I would not like you to worry.
So, today I did not buy a tv, or watch tv live on my computer. ( Broadband is relatively new to me. I suppose I could watch live tv but after a lifetime of not doing so I suppose I am just not in the habit)
So, this is what I did do today instead of buying a tv or watching tv.
I read a little, drinking coffee in bed with a weight of cats keeping me warm. I read something of a child called Barbara who lived many years ago. A beautiful child. A writer.
I am also reading The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane, a book that makes you wish to walk.
I then drove to Solva with a sofa in the back of my van to deliver it to my lovely friend. Then for a walk on the beach, along the waterline where Ivy chased seagulls and found an egret. There was blackthorn blossom down to the rocks where lichen patches echoed the colour of the flowers. Lime kilns like low castles hunkered at the beach edge. The sky was heavy with cloud, but the light was bright.
If you look in the picture below you will see the bright white egret flying, right in the middle, light against the green. Like a tick.
We took only photographs, and a handful of shells, the fragile bone homes of sea creatures, to show to Mary and Little P when we got home, and we left only footprints, me and Ivy.
Next we went to Solva Woollen Mill, because I have a book launch next Friday and my new book has arrived and we needed to talk about the launch ( Me and Anna, not me and Ivy. Ivy doesn’t talk much because she is a dog) and I needed to sign books. The launch is at 5pm-7.30 on May 8th at Solva Woollen Mill. But I was signing books for people who can’t make it because they live in Australia and Canada and New Zealand and England.
I loved signing this one, for Sally, for her 70th birthday.
Home. Lots to do. Ivy and me gave Mary and Little P the shells and they want to know now what creatures lived in them. One is small and pink like a baby’s fingernail. Little P asked why some have holes in and I told him it is because birds have pecked holes in to eat the small creature inside. Mary said we should find the big book about shells and learn the names, because names are important and I said yes, lets.
Little P, Mary and Leopard looked at the shells and I looked at my painting, The Unquiet Dreams of Swift Footed Longdogs, and I thought, perhaps a little more blue, smalt and ultramarine, and then it will be finished.
So now I am cooking, friends coming for supper, some venison with plums and red wine, and purple sprouting that looks like the best kind of flowers, and when they are here we will talk with each other, telling stories. I am listening to Colm Mac Con Iomaire’s music which is beautiful and soulful. I am alone in my studio so do not need a licence to play it as no one else can hear. After my visitors leave I will walk the dogs and cats around the starlit village. I will go to bed and learn just a little more about a child who could see through the veils of the world in the book I am reading, a book almost as old as myself.
So, as you can see, I do not have time for tv, nor the habit of it. And I am glad one does not require a licence for books.
Tomorrow I will paint a piece for Kids Need to Read, for their calendar, to raise money for children in USA who don’t get enough access to books.
I will let you know again next week if my circumstances should lead me to the purchase of a tv set, and thus a licence. I hope they do not. My life seems richer without one.
I sure love your stories and letters – Hopefully someone at the license office is reading them… 😀 Thank you ever so much for sharing
I am in Oklahoma (USA) and if you don’t have cable or sattalite (and pay), you must have an antenna to pick up free local channels. Most of the time it works, unless the weather is bad. Love your letter to the “powers that be”!! Congratulations on your new book! It looks wonderful!
Love it. Every week. Someone will start buying books if you can convert them.
Sandy in Bracknell
I can see this one running and running 🙂 Fabulous 🙂