Words Dept.: entry

I went out to John Lewis this lunchtime and bought a new telly. I know there’s a recession on and everything but having spent the New Year staring at the huge new flatscreen TVs owned by family members, I suddenly realised my beloved 26-inch JVC (bought seven years ago for £375 in cash from a shop on Balham High Road) is looking a bit pathetic. If your mum has a better telly than you, it’s time to get the credit card out. It’s just a simple rule I live by.

There seemed to be a lot of people having similar thoughts. Despite being a cold Tuesday afternoon, the place was rammed with ravenous consumers ignoring the semi-apocalyptic economic environment. Senior citizens, especially, seem to be in the money. Thus John Lewis’ electrical department resembled Botany Bay during a Shearings coach party excursion. In order to speak to an assistant, you had to give your name to a woman holding a clip board and wait to be called.

You almost certainly don’t care, but I’m getting a Sony Bravia KDL32V4000. The TV is merely “HD ready” and is thus quite a lot cheaper than the “full HD” version known snappily as the KDL32W4000 (try to remain interested). But the assistant in the shop endorsed the hypothesis that for a 32-inch screen, the benefits of full HD are either negligible or non-existent. (I contemplated a 37-inch or even a 40-inch screen but in addition to the fact that our sofa is only about six feet from the telly, my inner snob convinced me that there is something slightly crass and unappealing about such a massive goggle box.)

I would have bought it off the internet but for some reason John Lewis is selling them on special offer at £28 less than the cheapest internet retailer I’ve seen (Amazon) and almost a £200 less than the list price on the Sony website, with a five-year guarantee thrown in. I’ve no idea why this is. The only downside is that I have to wait a couple of weeks for it to arrive. Oh, and then I need to buy new TV bench, Blu-Ray player and Sky HD.

Damn.