It was Christmas Eve and the Bear was unusually quiet until I heard a few swearwords coming from the living room. When I went in he looked at me in exasperation and said 'I've lost the English programmes.'

He had pulled out the shelf under the telly and been playing with the digibox connections in an attempt to get the DVD recorder to work. The satellite channels weren't working because the box was switched off but Bear can't tell a red light from a green one. After I had rectified that small point I asked if he had fiddled with the scart leads. He denied it but it was obvious he had since the DVD no longer came through to the television. I chided him for messing around without knowing what he was doing and he retorted that I should have been there to help instead of sitting on my fat arse at the computer!

It didn't take long to rearrange the leads so that we could watch DVDs but recording them remains a mystery.