The Saturday before Christmas, at about 10.30 at night, we bought a television. It was not a decision we took lightly.

We’d had our trusty 14ins Sony for almost 20 years, and it had seen us through one video recorder, a DVD player, two digi boxes, Pingu and Blue Peter, Outnumbered and The Tudors.

It was deeper than it was wide, and despite its compact size it required two adults to carry it any distance. But its greatest strength was, we both agreed, its humility.

It merged into the background in our living room. It didn’t draw attention to itself and insist it be the focal point of the domestic tableau. It didn’t suggest that the only thing in life worth doing was watching TV. How sad would that be?

Instead, it sprang to life immediately when we turned it on, displayed the BBC newsroom or Paxman’s University Challenge desk accurately enough, and went blank again when required to do so. Excellent job.

Except for one thing. As the second decade of its work drew to a close, so did something else. Our eyesight. No longer could my husband and I sit 6ft away and make out the detail of the UC picture round. If we wanted to watch a sub-titled foreign film, we had to sit cross-legged directly under the screen.

Our son, whose teenage years were blighted by the shame of a 14ins TV when the rest of Wiltshire languished in front of 40ins or more, spotted the chink in our armour.

Within a couple of days of returning from university, where student bar walls are plastered with giant tellies, he was speaking in tongues we could not understand, but go by the names of LED, LCD and Blu-Ray.

And by mid-evening on the Saturday before Christmas, we started to cave in. It might have been the fact that closing credits to films now looked like the small print on an insurance policy – both illegible and incomprehensible. Or it might have been the fact that we had been sampling the port we’d bought in for Christmas Eve – and had done such an exemplary piece of research that I would have to go and buy another bottle on the Monday. Whatever. All I know is that by 9 o’clock we were drawing up a shortlist, and by 10.30pm we managed to get one of the last 32-inchers that Amazon had left. My husband was sceptical up until the minute it arrived. It would be too big. It wouldn’t fit in the alcove. All the usual stuff. But as soon as we plugged it in, life changed.

I can only compare it to the first time you get prescription glasses. Up until then, leaves on trees have so gradually become large fuzzy blobs that you barely remember that once they appeared to be individual items attached to things called twigs. Then, when an optician takes you in hand, you get a bit of a shock. It’s been the same with our new telly.

We have gone from a couple who are seriously selective about our viewing to absolute TV whores.

Our friends exchange looks with our son, and pat his shoulder sympathetically.

We can see what you’ve had to put up with, they seem to say. No wonder you left home. It wasn’t to further your education. It was so you could get to see some proper telly.

We barely go out any more. There’s no need. Next to the TV is a pile of DVDs that used to come free with some of the weekend newspapers. Foreign arty films. Pithy war stories. Classic film noir. Every night we wolf down our dinner so we have time to squeeze one in.

At work, there’s talk about the news in the papers this morning. Negative economic growth. Inflation. Dodgy expense claims. I keep my head down.

I haven’t read the news for weeks. There’s more to life than the news, for heaven’s sake. Chill out a bit, and just watch some telly instead.

For example, what could be more relaxing than a tormented werewolf, ghost and vampire who move to my home town of Barry? Honestly, get a life.