Tag Archives: TV

Reading, Writing, Researching, Reviewing…

Easter Sunday, being one of the two days of the year when the shops close, is the perfect guilt-free day for catching up on things I want to do. There are no launderettes, no shops and no garden centres to reproach me for my lack of activity. I do experience a slight twinge of guilt at not going to church, and it does bother me that Julia has to work, but a sit down with a nice cup of tea usually helps me get over it.

Today was similar, as we both decided to block out the weather and watch poor quality TV. Or, to be more accurate, we decided to block out the weather and watch the only TV that was available.

It’s a bit like junk food, sometimes it’s just what you need.

I’ve been using it to do some reading, as I don’t seem to have done much reading recently. I’ve also looked some things up and taken photos of book jackets ready to do a bit of reviewing.

What I haven’t done over the last two days was much writing. I think the cause of this lies in potential – as I prepare, the whole world of blogging is out there, waiting for my masterpiece.

Once it’s written it’s just one more slightly disappointing post.

Modern Life and Poor TV

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Over the years the British TV industry has made a lot of great TV. So has the American TV industry. Sadly, the people who plan what programmes to play have decided not to use any of that output tonight. Julia has gone to bed, as we are up at 5.00 tomorrow morning, and after washing up, making her sandwiches and having a snack, I’m at a loose end.

I could go to bed, but if I spend too much time there my back begins to play up, so I’m resisting the idea for a few more hours. This is probably a sign that we need a new mattress. It’s also a sign that I could spend a little money and make my life more comfortable. That’s not something I’ve thought of before. It’s probably a sign of the wisdom that supposedly comes with age, but it’s been a long time coming.

I could also do some work, as I have a number of things tasks piling up, but you know how it is. Sloth and procrastination, even in the company of poor TV, are preferable to work, even if that work is only googling stuff and making lists. It’s like sugar and fat – you know lentils and carrots are better for you, put you still reach for a biscuit in preference to salad. Or is that just me?

Inanimate objects, meanwhile, continue to make my life complicated.

My shoes have decided to express solidarity with my trousers and make my life a misery. The right shoe has started leaking. I’m hopeful that if the snow goes soon I may get another nine months out of them.

The problem with shoes is that my left foot is nearly a size larger than the other. In order to achieve a decent fit I have to stretch the left shoe a little, then wear it in. Sometimes this takes several months, and can be quite uncomfortable on account of the bunion that is starting to develop. By the time I have everything as I like it the shoes start to wear out.

I’ve tried getting round it by buying bigger shoes, but it’s hard to find size 13 in the shops, and it can be difficult walking when your right foot is rattling about in a massive shoe.

As if this isn’t enough, the car warning lights have started winking at me again. The left sidelight is devoting itself to inducing an intermittent fault. I’m not even sure why I need a sidelight with all the others, but it seems important enough to warrant a warning light of its own.

This is one of the complexities of modern life. In the old days bulbs just used to blow and you replaced them at MOT time or when a policeman pulled you over.

A Weekend of …er…nothing much

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Got home just after 6am (after dropping Julia off at work, not after a night on the tiles!) and after a few Amazon reviews, a trawl of the internet for birthday presents (I have no idea, she won’t give me a clue and the day is looming), looking at the blogs of a couple of my new followers and a diversion into Avro Lancasters, I now find it’s 9am. Where does the time go?

Yesterday started with breakfast, dropping Julia off at work, taking stuff to the charity shop and going to a meeting. I’m helping someone launch a range of Jamaican seasoning, and this involved having another breakfast to test the recipe for his new omlette. It includes chilli, and has a definite wake-you-up quality.

Home for lunch. This was a cup of tea and a mournful look at the fridge as I decided that two breakfasts meant no lunch. I am dieting, and not enjoying the experience.

Nice cup of tea

In the afternoon I compiled a list of Farmers’Markets in a 40 mile radius and may, possibly, have drifted off for a few minutes due to the sheer thrill of listing. The defining features of Farmers’ Markets seem to be that the website must be out of date and the contact details unavailable.

Then I picked Julia up from work, shopped, moaned about the price of things, fitted a cover to the car windscreen to ward off frost, made tea and toasted crumpets. It’s autumn after all, and you need to keep yourself warm and cheerful.

We re-heated a beef casserole I’d prepared earlier in the week and served it with red cabbage and kalettes. I like kalettes, they don’t take much cooking. they taste good and they are bursting with goodness, or so the website claims.

Picture of kalettes from last year. I do have a beef casserole photo but it shows brussels, not kalettes, and potatoes, which I’m no longer eating.

After that I blogged, watched poor quality TV (including Strictly Come Dancing), suggested that we should go to tango lessons (I’ve always fancied myself as a smouldering Latin tango dancer, despite all the evidence to the contrary – lack of rhythm, two left feet and suspiciously Anglo-Saxon colouring), made more tea, ate a supermarket panna cotta that was crammed with sugar and additives, downloaded Kindle books and, finally, went to bed.

There was, as you can probably guess from my anti-frost precautions, no frost.

I hate it when that happens.

And that brings us back to the top of the post. It’s 10 am now and an hour has gone into writing, and re-writing, a post about where my time goes.

After looking for a couple of stock photos to illustrate this post I’ve decided to do another post about my favourite photos, but first I’ll probably do one about Armistice day.

After that I’ll heat up the beef casserole for lunch and cook most of the food for next week.

Then I’ll wash up.

I do hope all this excitement doesn’t wear me out.

Watching TV and Reflecting on the Unfairness of Life

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I’ve just been watching Countryfile Autumn Diaries on TV whilst writing up the second post about our visit to Stoke. I’m fuming. I often fume, as you have no doubt noticed, but this time I’m having to hold myself back from throwing something at the TV.

It seems that many of our common garden plants are poisonous. Knew that.

Garden soil contains bacteria which helps cure depression. I’ve written about that more than once in this blog.

They also showed us a group of men who get health benefits from working together in a garden group (a sort of Men in Garden Sheds). Knew that.

Darwin was an expert on earthworms. I’ve blogged on that too. I can also tell you that he was related to the Wedgwoods of Stoke, which I visited yesterday, and that he noticed the activity of earthworms when discussing how all the pottery waste was pulled down into the soil. They didn’t tell you that on TV.

Then they visited the worm farm where I bought our wormery.

So there you are. I’m sitting at home unemployed, and possibly unemployable, and those idiots are getting paid lots on TV for talking about stuff I already know. There’s something wrong with the world.

If I’d been able to find something to throw there would be something wrong with my TV too.

It’s not even my specialist subject.

Talking of which, Tim Wonnacott managed to make three errors in thirty seconds yesterday when talking about Princess Mary tins.

I’m not saying I’d be any good at presenting TV shows, or that I’m always accurate, but it does seem like money for old rope when all you’re doing is talking about stuff I already know.

Nothing much happened today

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It’s 9.30 at night, I’m watching Grantchester and gradually losing the will to live. It’s all getting mired down in the complicated personal lives of the characters, to the extent that it’s more soap than sleuthing. Tonight features a romany camp, which I always associate with Albert Campion, cunning disguises and weak plots from the 1930s.

You would be correct in thinking I’m not a fan. I read some of the books and thought they were OK, even if they weren’t as good as Father Brown. Yes, the Father Brown stories are dated, and the TV stories do deviate from the originals, but they are crime stories with characters, not a soap with a crime in it.

At least, with both kids heading back to Yorkshire by train, it’s now quiet. I’ve never known two people make so much noise without actually saying anything useful. It might be that I’m getting old, or it might be that they are badly brought up. Either way I suppose it’s my fault. It normally is.

I had to laugh at one point yesterday when we were watching TV. Number Two son, following a story about a wayward child, said:”If she was my daughter I’d have banned her from doing that.”

“You might want to think that through.” I said,”When have you ever taken any notice of me?”

I’ll leave you with that thought.

The Epitome of Relaxation

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I’ve just been to the doctor, which is not something to be undertaken lightly after my recent experiences. Fortunately I emerged with only mild embarrassment and a prescription for antibiotics and ointment.

I still look forwards to the day when I am allowed to keep my trousers on. This was, unfortunately, not that day.

My reward was a nice quiet sit-down in the pharmacy followed by test of willpower (swallowing a large uncoated pill which I suspect of having veterinary origins).

I then sat down to watch a number of obnoxious people competing to be judged as best value B&B. I can understand why people would want to go on such a programme to boost their business. I can’t, on the other hand, see why anyone would want to go on national TV to reveal themselves as the reincarnation of Lucretia Borgia.

Juli just returned from the hairdresser looking gorgeous. She has just changed because her last one, where she’d been going for 10 years, rang her to say they had closed down. Fortunately a new one has just opened round the corner, and it seems to be good. They will even shave my head for £6, which isn’t bad when you consider the contortions and safety aspects of doing it myself.

She just cooked beans on toast, with a garnish of sausage and bacon, plus a few mushrooms and some bubble and squeak (you have to remember the veg!).

Now I’m watching The Saint. it’s in colour and features Yootha Joyce and Tony Booth as Russian agents.

Soon it will be time to read a bit more, shout at some idiot quiz contestants and drink more tea.

Wife, tea, TV.

Does it get any better than this?

A day in need of a title

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Julia went to work tonight but, having read the post from earlier in the week, she left me with a number of instructions.

My afternoon therefore passed in blameless fashion, taking a trip to the shop, watching quizzes onTV, preparing a light evening meal and most definitely not taking canine countermeasures. Julia says if I do that again she will take away my irrigation equipment. I assume she means the bucket, but I’m taking no chances.

She is back now, and having eaten, we are now watching The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

It is graded PG, as in “some scenes may be unsuitable for small children”. As Julia said, we watched it as small children, and it didn’t do us any harm. Things were different in those days: we had toy guns, corporal punishment and polio too.

It’s the first time we’ve seen it in colour, as it was all black and white TV in those days. Seeing a T.H.R.U.S.H. agent in a powder blue kepi for the first time was a little strange.

As for the plots…

I quite like The Avengers and various other programmes from the time, though some of them (like the The Persuaders), do make me cringe at times. I’m afraid that The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has been disappointing. Shame really, as it used to be my favourite. I suppose tastes change and what was great when you were five is not so good when you close in on sixty. Apart from ice cream and butterflies, I’m still quite keen on them.

Saturday’s list

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Mainly, I’m going to see my Dad today, but the morning will be taken up with yawning, displacement activity, moving books into piles mentally marked “Keep”, “Possibly” and “Not Yet” (you can see why the charity donation programme is grinding along slowly), and watching cookery programmes.

Cookery programmes fall under the categories of “Health”, “Nutrition” and “Education”. I have no conscience about watching them while Julia works. I do have a conscience about watching comedies and crime fiction, so I don’t watch them on Saturday and Sunday while she is at work. Quizzes are “Education”. Soaps, Australian soaps, most American comedy and programmes about the emergency services are, if I find myself watching at any time, are a sign that I need to go for a walk.

Since my trip to the doctor in December I have been given another blood pressure tablet, aspirin, and a pill to stop the aspirin eating my stomach away. The Taking of the Tablets is now quite an undertaking. That is now something I need to schedule in my day.

When you are taking pills to nullify the side effects of other pills it is time to start thnking about some serious weight loss. We are still, little by little, getting through the sweets and biscuits we were given for Christmas. Another week should do it. Next year I think we may allow ourselves a week of relaxed diet and then donate the remaining calories to charity. It’s a bit Scrooge-like but I need to get a grip.

I’m off to see my father now. I will spend the journey down looking for Buzzards and Red Kites. The journey back will be occupied by me musing on mortality, and (mainly) by wondering how a man with Alzhemer’s has beaten me at dominoes. Again.

The bird pictures are ones from the day we were attacked by the swan.

Gadwall drake – Rufford Abbey lake

Gadwall duck on Rufford Abbey lake

Magic of the Media

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As I said at the time, if anyone else had touched my wife like that I’d have taken exception. However, as he’s come to do a feature for Notts TV I allowed it.

It’s only 9.44 as I type and we’ve already had the first of the groupies turn up.

Pardon my cynicism, but such is the magic of the media.

I wonder if I should have worn make-up this morning?

Sun, cynicism and salt-dough

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Actually, there’s been no sun but I needed a third “s” word for the alliteration.

However, there has been plenty of cynicism and I’m up to my ears in salt-dough.

The cynicism has been rising as arrangements for filming have advanced. Both the BBC and Notts TV want to come and do pieces on us and, rather like a 70’s sitcom, there has been a noticeable change in some people. I’m waiting for the first one to crack and say: “All right, Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my close-up.” It can’t be long now…

Watch this space for more news on our flirtation with fame and the media.

I managed to fit in plywood between the cynicism and the salt-dough. We have a plan to build a loaf of bread six feet long and four feet high. We also have a pile of second-hand plywood four feet high. It’s mainly odd sizes and none of it is a convenient. I did start planning how we could use it but it became clear that the patchwork effect and the amount of framing needed was going to make it impractical. So it’s back to Plan A.

While I was in the barn counting plywood I noticed the House Martins are gathering mud for their nests. I’ve just been back with the camera but somebody is now working in the yard and has scared them all off. Will have to see what I can do later.

On the salt-dough front things are getting better. We have a group of around 20 Guides coming on Monday night so I need to produce around 40 shapes for decoration – one for them to keep and one for us to display on Open Farm Sunday.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After my stiff dough and thick tiles of last week, I have been doing some thinking. With my first attempt I converted the 2:1:1 ratio of flour, salt and water into weights. Today I used cups and produced a much more workable dough. It just goes to show it doesn’t always pay to get technical. I have four trays of animal shapes drying, and they are half the thickness of my original trial pieces so things are looking up. By 6 pm they should all be ready for use.

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Life after the Care Farm