Wednesday 15th December

Annoyingly, after all the plugging-in thrills of last night, the V+ box doesn't seem to be responding. K resolves to call them this morning, and their helpful staff assure us they'll "send some signals down the box" which all sounds terribly technical to my layperson's ears, but sure enough after a reboot it starts receiving channels. When K goes to work I poke about with the box a bit but can't seem to get the actual V+ recording bits to work. No problem, I reason, this probably takes a while to load up. I leave it on and head off to the office.

Getting home later, it has become clear that the V+ stuff isn't working - so I reset the unit. Ah. Now it doesn't work at all. Slightly furious with myself for resetting what was, I suppose, a working box but also with the box itself for taking so long to get to the error message each time (AP:43, for the record), I call Virgin. After chatting to one of their friendly UK-based staff I'm soon forwarded to a crackly line to India, where a nice but uncomprehending lady assures me she's booked an engineer (not, of course, actually trying to fix anything). Fine, I say, and grumpily retire to the sofa to look at the blank screen projected by my crocked birthday present.

This gets boring, of course, so I decide to get myself in a more festive mood by watching Die Hard. It seems to work, too. Good old reliable Die Hard.