h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Telly doesn't feature much when we go to our seaside cottage in Beadnell, Northumberland, England, the UK, Europe, the World, the Solar System for the weekend. There is more to do clambering on the rocks or running through the sand-dunes. There are butterflies to catch and pin to mum's chrysanthemums and lupin seeds to pop on the doorstep. But they'd been so insistent for a couple of days now on the telly. so passionate, so convincing that there was something coming up worth staying in for. Every time I heard an announcement from the BBC about the special programme on budgies I knew I had to watch. "It's all about budgies," I told Mum. I told Mum's friends too, when they came round for coffee. "There's a programme on about budgies." I added when Granny came in, "all afternoon!" She was just about to sit in a bowl of peaches by the fire, I got those out of the way in time. She's done that before. "It's on at 3 O'clock," I told Dad when he made a lunchtime visit in between golfing and shooting.
Everyone had fixed to do something else that day. It took a lot of moaning to convince Mum that I should stay in. The last thing any of them wanted to do was sit in front of our small portable black and white telly on the windowsill. The excitement gripped both channels they were covering the same story. "It must be budgie day." I hope Grandpa knows, I told Granny to tell him. Grandpa used to keep a yellow one on a stand in his kitchen. He told me. It must have looked just like the one n the box of Trill birdseed he fed it from. (I've seen the box in pet shops when we go to get the guinea-pig food).
No one listens to me. No one is convinced. No one wants to watch the budgie programme with me.

Mum is in the kitchen, Gran is on an all day tidy up around the house, Grandpa is organising the shed, Nick is racing dinky toys in the dirt track with one of the Spore boys, Jane is in Mum and Dads room going through Mum's make-up, Dad is long gun with a gun I saw him polish and the aupair is out in Mum's car up to the village.

The telly goes on and Mum disappears in a cloud of commands. Joanna comes in from the garden with a pile of stones in her knickers.

There's a lot of talking, but no budgets. I try the other channel. More talking about budgies. But no budgies to look at. No children's television either. I sit in waiting for it to get better. It doesn't. I've been fooled.