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--> --> March 28: The joy of Pepsi - an English artifact By Larry Berteau TV watching is a sporadic exercise in my house. We have enough TV sets to handle a three-human program, mind you. In fact, we have eight TVs, if you include the six versions scattered around the garage and stuffed in closets like lonely sentinels to Steve Allen and Lucille Ball. Still, the viewing pattern is chaotic. More on the chaos later. Vegan chops We are overrun by TV sets because my wife - the woman of perpetual mirth - can't pass up a bargain. She has arrived at this state of shopper's dementia in an estimable manner. Most of all, she's English. This is a nation of people who spend money like a penniless vegan trapped in a butcher shop. It wasn't the act of rebellion at the Boston Tea Party that ticked off King George's multitudes, it was the utter waste of it all - making it into the ultimate act of anarchy. I have spent time in our colonial forefathers' country, and have come away amazed at the tight-fistedness of these otherwise sapient characters. Telly-attic delight The first experience came in a village on the outskirts of London - Hampton-upon-Thames. (Short train ride out of Victoria Station, change in Twickenham, mate.) I had met a girl (pre-mirth girl) in Greece and after a journey to the Mideast I shocked her (and her family) by taking her up on what had obviously been an invitation borne more of courtesy than genuine interest, to come visit and stay awhile at their home. Once the initial jolt of my arrival had passed (that Brit stiff upper lip helped out enormously) and I had settled in, there we were (me and the fam) watching TV (actually the Telly, as they so affectionately refer to it, as if it was a friend who had dropped in unannounced). The blinds had been drawn, Telly had been brought down from the attic, hooked up, then returned to the attic immediately after the viewing window had closed. The reasoning behind this clandestine act was there was a tax on Telly that all citizens who housed this guest had to pay. Upon inquiry, I discovered the amount was virtually insignificant. It's just that this family - and virtually every other family in the country - thought it was an unreasonable expense, consequently they cheated. The blinds were drawn because there were Telly patrols that cruised neighborhoods, with a list of those paying the tax, and if the Telly cops saw a house with a Telly on that wasn't on the list, they'd bust down the doors. A heavy fine was levied, I was told. Still, it was all worth it. Presumably, this is why there were only three channels - all BBC owned and operated - as there was no way a Nielsen rating could ever be conducted. Truth was, there were only 73 sets in the entire nation, according to Telly taxers, excluding the well-to-do London hotels. It was even rumored that the shutters slammed shut at Windsor Castle when Faulty Towers was on. This same family turned on the hot water heater Sunday morning, and turned it off Sunday night, allowing for such subtleties as showers and laundry to be performed. This was not a destitute family. It was lorded over by university professors, and both kids worked. I stayed a few months, and would sneak away once or twice a week and stroll down to the public baths. I never confessed my smuggling ways. It was a cold, American necessity, and besides, we had a history of such acts of insurrection with these smug guardians of the language. A happy quarter-hour Years later - the woman of endless good humor in tow - I visited her parents on the south coast of England. Imagine my joy when, on the very first day, I was told at 5 p.m. it was happy hour. Imagine too, my chagrin, when I discovered it included one glass of beer and wasn't a happy hour at all - rather a happy 15 minutes. My wife, the woman of never-ending joy, explained to me that the happy moment's brief candle was due to the fact that to make it any longer would not be frugal. (I would later conclude that this tiny window of joy came about because the English can't be truly happy for an entire hour - my wife, of course, being the lone empirical exception.) I made several mistakes during that visit - all centering around my wasteful ways - but none was more stimulating than the day I strolled to the village and squandered 50p on a plastic jug of Pepsi. (I couldn't help it, I was having a revolutionary moment, and the pence were burning a hole in my radical pocket.) I drank the entire cistern of bubbly brew that very night. (Attempts at sharing my effervescent delight raised more eyebrows than a Queen Mum's appearance at a Victoria's Secret lingerie party.) When I finished, my wife's father - a man of eternal knowledge on any subject but especially golf and American politics - asked me what I was doing when I deposited the empty Pepsi container in the garbage. I said I was depositing the empty Pepsi container in the garbage. He clucked, and removed the offending object from the same garbage. Try to imagine my wild-eyed wonder when, the very next morning, I saw two halves of the Pepsi container hanging from ropes off the back porch, filled with bird seed, rocking back and forth as one tight-taloned English wren after another swooped in to enjoy the soft-drink-container-provided pleasure. Picture an international Pepsi party of feathered creatures chirping their song over hill and dale, from Bournemouth to the Isle of Wight: Bop-pa-pop-pop-pa. Ships ahoy, Johnny Now you understand the genetic and cultural makeup of the bargain hunter with whom I share my life. It is difficult to explain my feelings when I come home from work and she says, "Come here, let me show you what WE got." The feeling is not unlike John Adams, returning home along the promenade after a difficult day of work at his Boston law office, and a British soldier saying, "Come down to the harbor, mate, five new man-of-wars just tied up." There, nestled on the garage floor, is another TV set. It slouches, its droopy ears wrapped in aluminum foil, its knobs worn threadless by excess, begging to be channeled out of its electronic misery. Unfortunately, for this tubed boob, it has come to rest in our garage for the rest of its unnatural life - it's only salvation being it has legions of friends, from Hoffmans to Sylvanias, Sonys to Hallicrafters, Mitsubishis to Packard Bells. Our garage is multi-cultural, multi-lateral, and multi-laden. Avoiding the tax(ing) The chaos occurs (remember the earlier notion?) because we have cable - that cursed invention that makes well-informed, well-entertained cretins of us all - which includes a British channel. This throwback to my daze in Hampton pops up on the Telly and NYPD Blue is in utter jeopardy. A quick run to the bedroom of my son - the lone heir to the vast Berteau fortune - finds Play Station II teaching the impressionable lad how to push a Chevy to the limit at Daytona. Later, I can be found fumbling in the garage for a cable splitter in a desperate attempt to hook up a circa-1974 Sylvania before Andy Sipowitz finishes with that skell he has cornered in the coffee room. Naturally, I fail. I can be found later that night, wandering through the house after everyone has gone to bed, opening the blinds and toting a Sylvania back to the garage. And we think we won the war. Larry Berteau is editor of The Tidings. Email your... 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