September 11. The day that changed the world. And I was able to catch up with a year’s worth of it tonight thanks to my trusty ol’ Tivo - the gadget that has truly changed my life. Now - there seems to be an entire parallel universe of people like me - it’s called the Tivo Community - and there are millions of us - a global, multi-faith congregation of individuals whose lives have been changed forever by Tivo. The strange thing is that there appears to be nobody else in my office who has got one. I suspect that I have probably bored my colleagues to death going on about how good Tivo is and how it changes your life and all that, yeah, yeah, yeah - but I can honestly say that this gadget is probably the best lifestyle-changing gadget since the mobile phone. And it’s not because of the “pause live TV” feature either. There are so many things about it that make this one of the best 200 pounds that I ever spent - there just isn’t enough space here to write about it. But the remote control for it is by far the best remote control of anything I’ve ever seen - a genius in design!

Which has just reminded me - my all-time-best 200 pounds ever spent was on replacing the lead water main pipe with a plastic one. The change to my lifestyle was dramatic! Just seeing and feeling the pounding jet of water coming out of the cold tap on the kitchen sink is thrilling. Being able to fill up a tall glass of water in 2 seconds - and having to do it ever-so-c a r e f u l l y so that the turbulence doesn’t create a vortex that floods the rest of the kitchen - this is always an exciting moment! Being able to take a shower without having to negotiate a suitable time with the rest of the family and no longer having to remind them not to open any other taps in the house - or not to flush the water etc. is just so liberating! But most exhilerating of all is the shower. That 200 pounds has turned the shower into one that rivals even the best of the ones that you get in American hotels. And finally - the removal of lead from the system has probably made me less prone to going mad.

“Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong…”.
from a song by David Bowie.