Betty's Utility Room

Last night was spent catching up with all the stuff on Sky Plus. There was now less of a backlog because BBC4's showing of the first series of "Heimat" had finished, and great diligence had meant we'd now seen all eleven hour/hour and a half long episodes.

We'd recorded "The Royal Tenenbaums" earlier in the evening, but only saw about fifteen minutes of it.

"I'm sorry, I can't watch anymore. It's just smug, self-congratulatory clever-clever bollocks" said the man of the house. So that was that then.

Next up was that Jarvis Cocker-hosted programme about great pop telly moments, wherein the usual great pop telly moments were wheeled out one more time: the Sex Pistols on "So It Goes", Jimi Hendrix doing that Cream song on the Lulu show, Pans People dancing to Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Get Down", etc., etc. Best moment came during an interview with Jimmy Savile.
He showed a mock up film poster he'd been presented with - a portrait of Sir James with the words "Apolcalypse Now Then" written underneath.

"The horror, the horror" said Jarvis. Jimmy responded with one of his yodels.

Running out of Sky Plus programmes, we resorted to the old standby. We're now onto series three of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on DVD. We were about ten minutes into the one where Richard Lewis's girlfriend ends up with a hideously bloated face as a reaction to a peanut allergy, when my other half spluttered something incomprehensible through a mouthful of wine and pointed over to my right. There sat a frog, apparently watching the telly attentively, even though the screen had just been put onto pause. At first I assumed I must be hallucinating - the fact that it was about midnight and I'd had a couple of large glasses of wine only heightened the effect.

I can ony assume the frog was attracted by the numerous moths in our kitchen. Keeping all the doors and windows open in a boxy Wimpey house on a sweltering July night is the only way to avoid expiring from heat stroke. Therefore, all sorts of winged beasts flock around the lights. Now there was amphibian wildlife to add to the multitudes.

Or, alternatively, he might have been trying to escape all those kids dressed as wizards and witches celebrating the arrival of the latest Harry Potter tome. They might have been attempting to catch frogs, toads and the like for some sort of evil spell they were casting.

He decided to do a tour of the living room, landing in a Ryman's carrier bag, realising that wasn't a good idea, then retreating behind the telly, getting tangled up in all the cables. What were we going to do - phone an RSPCA 24 hour emergency helpline? Fortunately, his tour led him round the back of the hi-fi. An attempt to climb the stairs was thwarted and the man of the house managed to persuade him to get into a jar. He was then released back into the great outdoors, for his own good, and to allow him to make his own way in the world.

Of course, if there was such a 21st century object as a digital camera in the house I could have taken a picture of him looking at the telly, and printed it to accompany this post with an hilarious caption underneath saying "a frog's eye view!!!!".

Still, I'm sure you'll realise that the story is not made up. In this case, truth is slightly more mundane than fiction.