Not speaking the language bothered me a lot, and I was never the school type. Sure, I finished all my exams and earned my diploma, but going back to school to learn English wasn’t something I considered. Instead, I spent my time searching for items on the streets.
At the time, I was living at Nic’s place, but he eventually moved me from a double room to a meditation room. This new space had no television, which was a big problem for me. The TV was crucial—it was my only way of hearing English consistently. I had no one to talk to except my ex-girlfriend, and the only English I heard came from the streets or the underground. Without a TV, I felt even more isolated.
So, I started riding my bike around Roehampton and Wandsworth. One day, while cycling through Battersea Park, I spotted a 32-inch RCA television. It looked like a good find. I strapped it onto my bike with some rubber bands and rode it home. This was a major upgrade from the small 15-inch color TV I’d found a week earlier in front of some council flats. That one worked perfectly but was far too small, especially in the setup I had in the meditation room.
I waited until Nic was out—he was selling products for Forever Living and popped in and out of the house all day. Once the coast was clear, I set up the new TV.
From experience, I knew better than to plug in a street-found TV without checking it first. The first step was to take off the back and inspect the internals. Sometimes, when you switch it on, you might see a spark, which can help identify problems. This time, though, I didn’t even get that far. The PCB (printed circuit board) was broken clean in half. It looked like someone had thrown the TV out of a second-story window. Luckily, it had landed on an old, well-used mattress, which absorbed enough of the impact to save the glass screen. However, the heavy metal transformer at the back of the TV had ripped itself off the PCB, tearing out a big chunk of the board with it.
Fortunately, I always travel with tools. Among them was a heavy-duty soldering iron I’d brought from Austria. It was the kind you could use for soldering tin gutters, not just electronics. Undeterred, I stripped some plastic off a mains cable and used the copper wires to bridge the broken PCB and piece it back together.
After fixing the board, I tried turning the TV on—but it still didn’t work. Upon closer inspection, I realized the IF receiver had been damaged when the TV bounced off the mattress. All the switches were broken as well, making it impossible to power it on conventionally.
I decided to remove the switchboard and figure out which combinations of bare wires needed to be touched to turn the TV on and change channels. It was a bit of trial and error, but eventually, I got it working.
When I turned it on, the only thing showing was a football match. I stuck a metal coat hanger into the back as an improvised antenna, and suddenly, I had a picture. Admittedly, it wasn’t perfect. Shadows plagued the screen, and every time a lorry drove by, the picture would go fuzzy. The weather wasn’t its friend either. But despite all this, I could now watch movies, and that was good enough for me.
To keep Nic from noticing my new addition, I stacked the big TV on top of the small one and covered it with a plastic bag. If he walked in, it would look like I still only had the smaller TV.
Happy days!