TV Remote

I guess it's all down to my mate Bill.

Back in March he told me all about a local Christian TV station, and even pointed it out to me in town. This had been a personal revelation to me – community TV? Really?

As both a long-term low-budget film-maker, and a community radio broadcaster, that idea fitted me like a glove.

Bill subsequently showed me their front door, but I felt as though it would be imposing of me to ask him to hang on while I went in for a - possibly lengthy – look around.

Even the morning that I had left NZ I had silently wanted to go and make contact with them on the way to the airport, but for the same reason felt bad about holding-up my driver.

Today, however, it was different. Today, I had made contact with one of the directors over the internet, and set-up an interview. Thus today, I walked from the coach-stop to the front door myself, and boldly determined to take the world of local TV by storm.

It was locked. And all the lights were off. Even the street was utterly deserted.

Apparently they'd forgotten that I was coming.

I left my heaving rucksack in the doorway and headed-out to find him. There's something intangible about that town that reassures you your stuff will be safe.

I located him in the church across the road, where I think he'd naturally assumed that I would come to find him when I arrived. A fair enough supposition, for a man who ran a Christian TV station.

The service was just finishing, and there was much debate about the sermon, which had – controversially – not been based on the Bible. Was that liberating the truth, or an abandonment of it? As I tucked into the free barbeque afterwards, I couldn't decide.

Seeing around the deserted station was fascinating. It was being run by computer-equipment similar to the one I'd already seen round up north, but which had been plundered from secular stations who had been throwing it all out.

I watched the start of a shopping show, and then the middle of a cookery one. The latter was weird. The presenter was from somewhere in the UK with an incredibly thick regional accent, which immediately made me feel as though she was an old friend. We were both, after all, a long way from home.

Afterwards the guy invited me back to his house for the afternoon. We actually did some baking together before he piled me up with food in preparation for my long journey back to my cupboard.

As I'd promised to, I dropped-in on Bill, but sadly he wasn't about, so I never got to thank him for giving me the contact. I did manage to finally drop-off some chockies and other European souvenirs for him and his family though, not to mention some photos I was asked for. Sheesh, they've been burning a hole in my fridge for the entire three months now!

Two more old friends later, I retook a few photos that had originally been damaged at the Kodak lab in Austria, and caught the coach back up to the city again.

And the position at the TV station? They offered it to me, on one condition: that I honestly believed that God wanted me there.

Out of the 100-200 applications I've made here, it's the only offer I've had.

And it's been yet another entire day that I've spent getting fed for free.