It’s all good! How loadshedding HELPED my TV sports-watching

Sofa So Good

Loadshedding: it is the bane of our lives and no less so for fervent television sports viewers.

Do you, like me, have to do a delicate calculation, through gritted teeth, whenever the latest bout of power cuts is announced, to gauge how disruptive the suburb-relevant roster might be to your looming SuperSport weekend big-match plans on the goggle-box?

You know the drill: “Bulls v Munster … OK, that one’s safe. Stormers game? Hmm, only second half. Might miss a few overs, here and there, of the Proteas’ ODI tussle, too. Liverpool v Manchester United on Sunday? Aargh, a write-off!”

The situation can trigger the need, of course, for an occasional Plan B … like popping into the generator-blessed pub in the neighbourhood for an unscheduled pint. (The other day I felt guilty on that score: it was the supposedly twice-weekly beer-free one I’ve begun promising my sensible but slightly hawkish daughter.)

So yes, sports fans are inclined to mutter as darkly about the national power provider as anyone else.

But then, a few weeks ago, a bizarre event happened that fleetingly (only that, please note) made me change my mind about Eskom: call it my unexpected contribution to this “Good News Day” on News24/Sport24.

GoodNews24: Read all the feel good stories.

We have an old, second flatscreen telly at the back of the house; it used to offer a pretty sharp picture, despite slightly pre-dating high definition (and certainly ultra-high definition), and was often enough my sporting cave, complete with obligatory secret stash of nibbles.

Just before the dramatic first pandemic lockdown of 2020 – now slightly over two years ago – it fell into long-time disuse, having begun (an accelerating pattern, sadly) to switch off temperamentally of