Episode 10 -The TV License

Or: How I became an enemy of the state for Owning No TV!

It’s April and it’s cold. I’m still walking around the house in disbelief after all the crap I just endured in the last few years. The only things I’m watching are my own thoughts spin wildly out of control – no Netflix subscription required.

Then one morning, there it is: a AN POST envelope. The kind that makes your soul sigh before you’ve even opened it.

It’s a TV license bill.
€160.
In my name.
With all my details, spelled correctly and everything. Which is impressive, since I’ve never paid for a TV license in my life.

I don’t even have a television.
I got rid of it. For peace. For sanity. For not being slowly worn down by murder documentaries and reruns of ‘Cash Cow Farmhouse Bake-Off Ireland’s Got Tractors’ or whatever is on these days.

So naturally, I laugh.
Then I rage.
Then I sit down and think: Who, in the name of Pat Kenny, sent in my details?!

Because I didn’t.
And the TV license fairy sure as hell didn’t fly down and tap my letterbox with her bureaucratic wand.

I’ll give you one guess. Let’s call him Bully Yates, civic-minded as ever. Apparently, in between scheming, removing what he wanted from the house, and emotionally haunting the place like a ghost who gaslights, he found time to turn me in.

To the state.
For owning a phantom television.

I almost admire the dedication.

Now I’m getting official letters demanding money for a screen I don’t have, from an institution I don’t respect, all while trying to cook dinner on a range powered by trauma and turf.

Lesson of the day: Grief may knock you sideways, but bureaucracy will still find your address.