Defenestration

Someone had left an old TV in the corridor. I didn’t know who – it was that kind of house – and it had been sitting there, gathering dust, for a good few weeks. This was 2007 so it was one of those big cathode ray bastards, and you had to take a weird little half-step to the right to get past it on the way downstairs to the kitchen.

It was annoying the crap out of me, so I decided to throw it out of my window.

Back then, I shared a dilapidated Victorian terrace with three equally dilapidated guys. My room was on the second floor, and was relatively homely if you ignored the fact that I was too poor to afford a bed. Anyway, I lugged the offending TV set upstairs, trailing the plug along behind me, and set it down on one of my bookcases.  My sash window looked out onto our postage-stamp of a back garden, which was ideal as I didn’t particularly want to maim a passing pedestrian with my rock’n’roll behaviour.

At this point, I reasoned that it was best to get on with it before someone stopped me. I wedged open the window – which like everything else in the house, and the tenants, didn’t work properly – and did my best to heft the TV out of it.

It wasn’t really a throw, to be honest. The damn thing was too heavy. No, if I’m being fair it was a half-throw, half-tip. Still, it made a beautiful sound, and threw up a heck of a cloud of dust.

I ran downstairs to survey my handiwork.

As I picked my way through the wreckage on the patio, feeling rather pleased with myself, I heard the window above me rumble open. It was my strange hermit-housemate, looking wild in an open dressing gown and bed hair.

It was four in the afternoon. Again, it was that kind of house.

“Hey!” he yelled. “I WANTED THAT!”

I squinted up at him, then looked back down at my feet. I kicked a bit of broken glass idly.

“It didn’t have a SCART socket.”

“Oh,” he said, instantly deflated. “Okay, as you were.”