Oh, but if you stay...

I just called Sky, they were lovely and polite until I refused to discuss staying with them. I told them I wanted to cancel and the guy says "Oh, we can give you a 25% discount for six months." So I asked what would happen after six months and he says "Well.....it'll go back up to what you're paying now!"

I asked him what the point was and he said "Well, it'll save you 25% per month." I explained that by cancelling, I'd save 100%...he didn't like that.

Then he tried to tell me that if I went into a shop and they offered me 25% off, I'd think that was a really good deal. I said "Not if I've been giving them approximately £65 per month for 11 years with nothing in return!"

He went awfully quiet for a minute and then told me that I wouldn't get TV any cheaper elsewhere, so I repeated that we barely watched it and it would be a WHOLE lot cheaper without it at all and I wasn't at all worried. He said "Well, this 25% off offer won't be valid after today." I was all blase and just said "Yes, I know." LOL

Funny, how their politeness drains away when you can out argue, in a cool, calm and collected manner, them!

I hope I don't find it too strange, I've had Sky TV for over 11 years now!

Sky TV will go off on July 22^nd.

Why I’m cancelling Sky

If you read this blog regularly then you'll know about the great TV experiment.

I'm happy to report that it's gone very well. All we have watched on TV has been the wrestling. So I was looking for ways around losing our sky subscription (that's the same as cable for peeps in the US) but still being able to watch all those lovely men slathered in baby oil!

Then I sat down with Kyle yesterday to watch WWE.....my god it was soooooooooooo boring! Its the same crap over and over again, same fights among the same people. So much cheating going on and no one is pulled up about it.

This week, there was a major "assault" on Batista, bad enough that it looked like they broke his arm. How exciting! I did a bit of research, his bicep was actually damaged during that assault and he'll be out for ANOTHER four months, he's only just returned from injury!

And you know what? Not a damn thing will be done to the 3 wrestlers that did that to him!

Then there was a match on ECW between Tony Atlas, who is, like, retired! And Evan Bourne, who is a twentysomething high flier who leaps around like a bloody frog. They've also got this Russian guy, Koslov, who is undefeated. But that's because he weighs over 300lbs and they keep putting him against nobodys who weigh 200lbs soaking wet!

FFS Vince - sort it out! You've just lost a family of viewers!

God I miss Hulk Hogan and Bret "The Hitman" Hart!!!

So, I can quite happily do without WWE.

Kyle went spare when I told him!

As for TNA, now that's a bit better - and would improve immensely if they ditched Mick Foley - and that's on Bravo, we can get Mum to tape that for us!

Catch up

I can now post pictures of the RAK gift I made. It's a baby jacket and I made it for a woman in the USA who is expecting a baby at the end of June. I received a PM from her at the beginning of the week thanking me profoundly for the baby jacket.

I've got loads of sock yarn here waiting to be knitted up. Some I've received from fellow Knitting Goddesses (Ravelry Link) and some I've bought!

I received a lovely RAK from Marie (stashsiren on Ravelry); she sent me some handspun, two little bars of soap and two sachets of SOAK (special stuff for washing yarn)! I'm dying to knit some socks for myself - especially as I haven't actually got any for ME - but I'm being stern with myself.

I've decided that I'm not allowed to start another new project until I get this damn shawl finished!

The Kid Silk Haze is driving me crackers and I'm bored beyond belief with the pattern, but I'm on the final chart now. I've just got to repeat that about 3 more times and cast it off and it's done! I'm not going to put a fancy border on - that will just take ages and REALLY tax my patience with the whole thing.

I sat out in the garden today, the sun was shining and it was roasting, here's a photo of my Mum's climbing rose - isn't it gorgeous?

I courted heat stroke for a couple of hours under all that KSH then came back inside - the bits of skin on show are now pink! In less than 2 hours!!!

We had Knit-A-Lunch on Saturday. It was a lovely afternoon, there was myself, Joy, Rachael, Jan, Sue and Alice (aka Socktopus) was down visiting her in-laws so I sent her a tweet and invited her along.

If you ever get a chance to go to her shop and meet her, then I would say definitely go - she is so down to earth, chatted away like we were all old friends and took a great deal of interest in what we were all knitting. Unfortunately she couldn't stay for the entire afternoon as they were due to catch the ferry to go home, but it was lovely that she came. Also unfortunate; I didn't get to meet Deuce; her little black pug. But we did show each other furry baby photos!

The kids are on holiday for the next week as it's May bank holiday, they go back on 1^st June, except for Matt who has now left high school bar his exams. It's a very strange feeling having two children out of school!

We're still not watching TV and it's been great! The only thing we've watched has been WWE and TNA wrestling so that the Sky+ box doesn't get overloaded too much. We also caught up on Medium and Bones this evening - it actually felt quite strange to have the TV on.

I've decided to cancel our Sky subscription, which will no doubt piss Kyle off no end, but I'm sick of paying £50 a month for something I rarely use and can live without! After doing a bit of research we've discovered that we can find the wrestling shows online, we can buy the box office main events through Mum's box (or keep our box for the free to air channels and pay for box office) and everything else we watch can be bought on DVD!

Hmmmmmmmmm that was quite a long post, wasn't it? If I've forgotten anything, do let me know

Giving up

We've had a family discussion today and we've decided we're going to have a trial run without the TV.

Just about everything we watch can be bought on DVD except for WWE and TNA wrestling – but there are ways around that. If we can't find the episodes online then I could always get my mother to tape it for us each week.

If this experiment is successful, then I'm going to cancel our Sky (satellite/cable) subscription – this will save me about £60 per month! I wonder if owning a TV, but only watching DVD's mean I'll still have to pay the TV Licence fees...

I rarely watch TV myself, I only watch the odd serial, Medium, Bones, Heroes, Lost, 24, Dr Who, Torchwood (which are all seasonal programmes) and the wrestling (year round) and all of those can be bought on DVD.

I prefer to listen to audio books while I'm doing my knitting.

The kids – except for Kyle – are all agreeable to the idea. Kyle is flipping a little bit about the change, but I'm sure he'll adjust. He's recently discovered youtube and all the videos available there. It helps that his new laptop arrives tomorrow!

We'll keep you posted!