At some point between getting up in the morning, wrapping my track pants in old newspapers and sending them to the city council, making papier mache models of Don Brash and going to bed, watching television became very expensive. It used to be free, I remember quite clearly.
But I turned around yesterday and noticed that the cost had risen to $90 a month - more than I pay Juan, the young man I employ to read to me in the afternoon and give me foot baths.
Sadly, people like myself, who live in Dunedin's more well-to-do, hillside suburbs, people with good taste and a fashion sense to match, know that class costs.
So, sadly, the monthly cost of watching decent television is threatening to crack the ton in my sprawling North Dunedin villa. This is because a certain pay TV company, named after a certain o'erhanging firmament, a certain majestical roof fretted with golden fire, yesterday introduced a channel with what is clearly the best television around.
But unlike many of the very good channels that have been added to that pay television channel, it ain't free.
SoHo - the new channel in question - had me when it promised re-runs of The Wire, absolutely the best television series ever made.
The Wire follows the cops, the newspaper, the criminals and the government of Baltimore, and was so good, and so well received by critics, it was aired after midnight in New Zealand in case someone realised how good television could be. And it will be replayed from the beginning.
So will Mad Men, and Boardwalk Empire, and Entourage. You should know about those shows - if you don't, you have no taste.
SoHo is a partnership between that pay television company and HBO, which has developed the very, very best in television in the last decade.
Think The Sopranos, think Six Feet Under; all shows that are about to make a return. But SoHo has more than just re-runs.
The Hour, which starts on Saturday, is a new BBC drama series centred on a current affairs show being launched by the BBC in June 1956.
It mixes reality and fiction, and has terrific actors, including, coincidentally, Dominic West, the English actor best known for his role as Detective Jimmy McNulty in the HBO drama series The Wire.
The Hour is quality all the way. So should be the HBO movies promised, which include everyone from William Hurt to Kevin Bacon, Anna Paquin and James Gandolfini.
I know it is not fair. Television should be free, like water.
SoHo will not cost extra for pay television subscribers for a month, but then it will be ripped away unless you pay.
And that will be a dilemma.
