How about that Line of Duty? What an AMAZING conclusion! I never saw that one coming! Full disclosure: I have never seen a single episode or part thereof. I am the one and only.
I must be a nightmare for small talk for friends and acquaintances when it comes to talking to me about what was on telly last night. “Did you see X?” The odds are that I won’t have seen it. There are too many books and newspapers to read, too much music to listen to, too much writing to do. If I started watching industrial amounts of telly, I’d do nothing else.
I know that age and circumstance has a lot to do with it. I am well aware of that having encountered plenty of people who are not in the first flush of youth and/or not being in the best of health. Watching TV is what people do when they are waiting for God. For some people, the companionship of the TV is all they have.
Seeing old age as being a time and a place where you are capable of doing little else apart from watching television, I try to postpone the inevitable and do something else. In front of me now is the computer screen, today’s Observer, Private Eye, Mojo, Railway Magazine and just behind me is a bluetooth speaker through which I have been listening to today’s 6 Music Radcliffe and Maconie show. I watched an elderly episode of Quincy earlier on as I ate my tea and I skimmed through some golf tournament or other on Sky. I didn’t watch Line of Duty or anything else. I need to have a balance. TV must be an occasional visitor, not a permanent fixture.
There will come a time when I can no longer write and read when I want and if my tinnitus gets any worse I might not be able to listen to any music, either. Then, I could end up being confined to the armchair watching telly “because it’s there”.
I like to think I control my TV viewing and not that the TV controls me. Television is still a miracle in my eyes but I dread the day coming when it’s all I have in my life. When I am watching Escape to the Country, Jeremy Kyle and whatever antiques show is on, I’ll know the end is nigh.
