Flat screen

The man who has come

to fix the washing machine

says “You’ve got a very small TV.

Why don’t you get a bigger one?

Our TV, 

is the biggest TV I have ever owned 

and the only one I have ever paid for 

I moved out of home at the point that TVs 

stopped being things that burglars stole

and started being things you pay to dispose of

I still remember the excitement 

when we got our first colour TV

to replace the black and white one

that you tuned by turning a knob 

It was years after all my friends 

and both sets of grandparents had got one

My parents saw following technology trends

as an unaffordable luxury

we’d never had a holiday abroad

Now a comfortably retired beneficiary

of extreme property price inflation - 

my dad’s TV takes up most of the wall

and is smart, with an ergonomic cinematic bend

and the younger people I work with

don’t have TVs at all