It All Started At......

I was raised with electronics in the home. I had a granddad who built his own televisions and radios back in the 1940's and 1950's. I have two brothers, one nearly twice my age and the other being a mechanical engineer. The eldest brother used to bring home old broken televisions from there he used to work as a repair engineer. He worked on some old dogs with valves and I used to get some of them for Christmas. I used to wake up on Christmas morning and see televisions and record players in front of me at the end of the bed for my Christmas presents. I used to get very excited about receiving electronic equipment from about the age of five.

I used to connect the equipment and find that it was actually faulty. The customer where my brother worked could not afford to get the television fixed. They asked for it to be scrapped and guess where it ended up. Yes, in my bedroom.

To this day I still collect junk. I just hate chucking anything in the bin. My brother used to bring home some rubbish for me to have. One of the gifts was a black and white portable television with valves. It used to take up to 3 minutes to actually show a picture because being a valve set, you had to wait for it to warm up. This particular television had a serious fault where after about 5 minutes of watching it, the picture suddenly faded away leaving the sound only. I had to switch the TV off and wait for it to cool down. Then about fifteen minutes later I would switch it back on and wait three minutes for it to warm up again. This would carry on until I got fed up.

The other gift I remember was a record player. This also had valves and an over heating problem. After about five minutes of playing a record, the sound would just turn into a seriously loud humming noise. I would have to switch it off for fifteen minutes to cool down. Then I would switch it back on again and play another record before switching it off again. Just like the television, this would carry on until I got fed up.

I used to grab a screwdriver at about the age of five and start removing the back of the TV. I didn't think about the fact that there could be about thirty five thousand volts sitting inside waiting for me to grab it even with the TV switched off. Well, the back was removed and I did not have a clue what I was looking at. I started to prod around with the electronics with my finger. I would receive small shocks up my finger and some of them reached up my arm. Then I would switch on the television and prod around again to see if I could stop the picture from fading away. This is when I got the full two hundred and forty volts up my arm. This shook me up a bit and made my arm ache. I am just so glad that I did not grab hold of the high tension connector to the tube. This would have been around thirty five thousand volts. 

I am lucky to be alive.