THIS is a confession that I thought I would never make. I have finally succumbed after fighting off the demons for years. I bitterly regret having to do what I have done but, in the end, there was no choice.

There is a Rugby World Cup coming up and I just dare not risk having to sit in front of the BBC broadcasting inter-county tiddlywinks whilst the only England team with the remotest chance of becoming world champions is being beamed live through hyperspace ... to a satellite dish miles away from Curmudgeon Corner.

So I have signed up to BSkyB satellite television, putting even more cash into Rupert Murdoch's already bulging pockets. But the question I am now facing is: will it make me happier? For this month sees the publication of a book which has cast a little more gloom chez nous, even though Mrs C has also gained a microwave oven. For, it appears, gadgets make us anxious.

Until recently, Curmudgeon Corner was a relatively gadget free environment. What we couldn't do on the Aga we could do on a gas hob or in the electric kettle or toaster.

Mrs C, bless her, has never been a one for the likes of food processors or electric carving knives: she says they take longer to wash and clean up afterwards than doing the job with an old-fashioned hand mincer or a decently sharp knife.

However, we got a new microwave because it was a) cheap and b) it is the quickest way of heating up the milk for our nightcaps and that's about all we use it for.

Except we don't even use it for that any more after I set the thing to heat up two mugs of milk for what I thought on the dial was 40 seconds which turned out in fact to be 40 minutes. It did take a long time to clean up the microwave after that.

As for the new telly, I can get the Sky sports channels (for a hefty fee), the four BBC and ITV terrestrial channels via satellite, which gives much better reception than the aerial on the roof, and also Channel Five, which has never reached our part of the Dales - its operators can't be bothered to go to that expense to entertain a lot of sheep.

On top of this, I can get some 70 free satellite channels and some of them are quite stunning. For instance, there are half a dozen devoted to history and other documentaries, just like the BBC used to make when it was a proper television service.

And there are several others that deal in classic films - many of them in black and white - which are masterpieces of their art: not one robot killing hundreds of other robots in sight. In other words, films with intelligent themes, just like the BBC used to broadcast before the marketing mediocrities took over.

However, I have still not answered the question: have Sky and a new microwave made us happier?

I ask because this new book, Complicated Lives by Michael Willmott and William Nelson, will prove, say the authors, that all these new gadgets are in fact making us unhappier because they are sending our anxiety levels through the roof.

The reason: most of us don't know how to operate them properly and so we live in a state of constant inferiority complex. Mobile phones may send videos - but how do you make a call on one?

Bills for simple things like gas, electricity and water are now so complicated that we don't know if we are paying too much or too little. And parents get so much conflicting advice on how to bring up their children, and how to feed them and the rest of the family, that they live on the verge of imminent nervous breakdown.

Oh for the days when Curmudgeon Corner had a water pump in the back yard and oil lamps for lighting. Oh for the simple life. Trouble is, could I get world cup rugby by oil-fired TV?

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.