I was thinking of what might make a decent topic for a short Friday blog. I was a bit stuck and then there it was right in front of me – literally. The ‘it’ was the TV and on this particular day (Tuesday as you ask) I had had plenty of time to consider the role of the one-eyed monster (as it used to be known in the olden days) in my retirement life. I’ve done this topic before in these retirement blogs but it keeps on giving as they say.
On this particular day and not completely unusual of late, we had watched, courtesy of Sky Q, about 4 hours of TV. It doesn’t look good on paper for the aspiring retired intellectual does it? I mean if I’d been asked about how I was going to spend my retirement years right at the start I doubt I would have come back with a reply along the lines of, oh, I’m just going to sit in front of the TV and relax. I suppose I could blame the pandemic but that may not be entirely fair.
But if only it did just that – relax me. I’m not a relaxed person and retirement has done absolutely nothing to improve my relaxation quotient. I’m a man constantly searching for that missing link so relaxation doesn’t seem a likely outcome. Of course I’ve only been retired for seven plus years so maybe there’s time to get it right?
So no relaxation, so what’s the best I can hope for when considering the role of TV in my life? First let me say right away, no daytime TV (unless it’s sport of course), we do have our standards. I suppose you’ll say if you start watching at 3.30 or there abouts what’s that then, late night TV? But I’ll gloss over that for now.
I would say our watching habits are fairly describable as, maybe a little fun balanced with some learning (we do watch a lot of documentaries). Both you will remember figure in my list of key retirement values. With the Sky Q box all things are possible and pretty much as and when you want them.
So if I consider, as an example, what we actually watched in those nearly four hours. It looked like this. We started with Grand Designs in Australia. Followed by a programme about all the little clubs in which some top musicians had started their careers. I’ll just say there’s a certain magic in spying on these environments particularly, dare I say, as a modest musician myself.
The last two hours we abandoned any pretence of learning and watched back to back Boardwalk Empire. You couldn’t call this educational unless of course you wanted to learn how to shoot people in the head. So this is pure entertainment although some of you would dispute where’s the fun in watching people getting shot in the head. And I’ll gloss over that as well.
I suppose we’re not helped to ration our viewing in that we do start early. But then we finish early and spend the last hour of the day reading. This at least maintains our image as retired intellectuals. But only just.
But coming back to the TV, shall I ask is there anything I’m not watching that I ‘should’ be or even more controversially is there some aspect of human existence that isn’t on but ‘should’ be? For me, rather than Mrs Summerhouse, two aspects of human existence spring to mind without going into too much depth – county cricket and railway films.
Much to my pleasant surprise the former was on Sky Sport when we got back from our hotel stay. For those of you that don’t know about such things you will have to take my word for it that this is extremely rare and so much more fun than the bish, bash, bosh version we usually get. Ahh the joy of watching the correctly played forward-defensive and, for a rare treat, the cover drive.
As for the railway stuff, well, if you can stand the bloody adverts, we now have Youtube on the TV and trains are all over this channel. Anyway I’ll stop this retirement blog fantasising now or I’m in danger of becoming boring. What’s that, too late you say? A boring blog? But retired people do watch TV you know. You may even be one of them.