Now I'm not one to Complain but Daytime Television...

Being forced to iron shirts today I treated myself to a period of watching Daytime TV while doing so.  This was not good!  Having around 50 channels to choose from and finding nothing to watch is a somewhat sad experience.  Apart from several shopping channels offering important things like priceless jewllery at knock down prices, or beauty treatments that layer a womans face with enough paint to cover the Forth Bridge and those offering a variety of health giving machinery that once bought lies in the garage for ten years unused there was little to entice.  The inumerable unfunny American comedies that fill the screen, all with canned laughter that is added by someone who is not watchign the programme I suspect, all wth at least two hundred episodes to come offer little cheer, as do the 1970's cop thrillers filled with actors who died before most of the stay at home mums watching were born.  
How dreich is this I thought, even the news programmes, the word 'news' is not to be taken literally here, offer little of thought but much emotion.  Women's troubles, babies, film/record/other stars, personalities with no personality, deep caring moments that vanish the minute the object cared for is out of sight and all with too smart men and flighty women who apparently entice the viewers.  I am well aware of what they entice in me!  As for Victoria Derbyshire on two channels at once well, I had better keep my opinion to myself!  How did she get her job?  

The British drams, much more modern being only 20 years old also fails to excite.  'Monarch of the Glen?'  A pastiche that makes any other soap look like reality.  'The Sweeney?'  A rough, tough piece of nonsense that made a name in the 70's but did not deserve it then either.  It does make the real police on those 'cop patrol' programmes look realistic however.  And as for the constant hour after hour of programmes in which someone opens a garage or a locked storage unit or looks into a shed somewhere and finds riches beyond his wildest dreams please, please, go away!!!  These appear to be on three or four channels and never end!  Surely someone somewhere has become a millionaire and moved on by now? 

Now, 'Four in a Bed,' and 'Come Dine with Me' just what is all this tosh about?  I confess I can only stand a few minutes but why are people filmed having dinner?  I'm scared to ask what the other one is all about!  Then there are the house programmes all of which are designed to make you yearn for that million pound house in the country/by the sea/in the sun.  Like the antiques programmes the base is simple, appeal to peoples greed and they will come and watch.  It succeeds!  The houses look good but do you wish to live beside those people?   Movies, how many do we need?  I watch none yet on offer in the morning I note more US drivel or aged Black & White films that may have been made during the war, though which war is not always clear.  
And then there are the adverts!  Apart from BBC one and two these appear every few minutes and follow a simple pattern.  You ask about PFI, Insurance for the aged, Lawyers because you deserve it, charity for babies/animals/hungry/only £2/£3/£5 a month always followed by the same trailer for a crap programme you saw the last time the ads were on and will see again every few minutes throughout the day!  

 
There were only two programmes this morning that I could begin to watch.  One featured Tony Robinson walking through History he said, although I preferred to turn the sound down and avoid his inane chatter while watching and 'Coast' always worth a look but again with sound muted as all too often the voice gets in the way of the pictures.  I look to the 'Yesterday Channel' to offer history but all too often that also gives dross instead of history.  An excuse to show old cheap programmes rather than something worth watching.  It is worth a peep mind just in case.   
I only ironed three shirts, that was enough to cover me for the period ahead and force me back to doing something useful at the computer.  

Wednesday

These Ivy leaves are more interesting than what is showing on my TV. With the digital set refusing to switch on I am now missing many of the channels U have become used to. At the moment, and until fortune favours me once again, I am limited to five channels on terrestrial TV. I did not realise just how much I enjoyed 24 news channels! All day long a cocktail of house improvement programmes, antique type shows and bloody chefs fill the screen. These are interspersed by aged black and white, and occasionally, colour films or chat shows full of females and their trauma. As Groucho Marx said, "When the TV comes on I reach for a book!"

I'm Bored!

I'm bored! It's Friday night and I am bored!

The sun is shining,
The sky is blue,
And I, poor soul
Have nothing to do!

Not only that but there is no money to do anything. There is no car, so I cannot go anywhere, there are no friends (bet that surprises you?) to call, no one to annoy visit, and the family are too far away and too busy boring each other anyway! So I am left alone, and bored.

I have no energy, mental or physical today so I cannot be bothered thinking of anything bright, clever, worthwhile or grumbling. Even playing 'Techtris' means little, while reading anything more than simple sentences wears me out. Even watching 'Top Gear' makes me boak as the cars go too fast, although that is normal to be honest. Every time I turn this programme on, and it is always on with 'Dave TV,' there are screeching tyres and clouds of tyre smoke. Why? If you have seen one grossly overpriced car racing along at 150 m.p.h. you have seen them all, yet each week they wax lyrical about something costing £200,000 and expect to get plaudits for it! Not from me pal! Maybe it's because I am no longer 20 years old, or maybe it's because I don't have a small willie (I'm excused shorts girls!) or maybe I have seen too many men trundling past my window in cars they obtained for the image not the usefulness, and here I omit the one who bought a MacLaren willie extender and then smashed it, and himself, into a tree not far from here. That was £200,000 wasted in my view. Of course the programme has some good bits, and occasionally actually informs and entertains at the same time, although while 'entertaining,' driving a car across the English Channel only informed us of the stupidity of attempting this act in the busiest sea lane in the world! But I digress, I was mentioning my boredom which comes from having no friends, no money, no life, and worse, no football to watch!

It never ceases to amaze me that when there is a (proper) football match to watch I need not be bored! It may be boring (Like watching Hibernian) or it may keep me on the edge of the seat, but at least if it is on I am part of the real world and something of importance is happening around me! I even watched Halifax play some unknown side in the 'Blue Square Premiership' once' and felt alive. Where is Halifax exactly? Television you see, while often offensive, insulting to the intelligence (like 'As Seen on TV' for instance! or 'Mutton Dressed as Lamb' 'Loose Women,') and full of mediocrity can in fact be a window on the world. What would folk trapped indoors all day do without a telly? Especially if they can obtain 'Freeview' or satellite TV.' This really can be a window on the world, although tonight it appears closed as nothing but the brain dead can be happy with the offerings being shown! But where is television heading these days. Video recorders were a great boon, especially when they recorded both the start and finish of the programmes, and DVD's and the new fangled digital stuff (I don't know either) make for new 'opportunities' as the TV folk say. The original idea of one channel (the BBC) was revolutionised with the introduction of ITV in 1957. The world changed at that moment, although we had no telly and all I was concerned about was my cardboard fort and the soldiers fighting over it! With TV available on PCs and in hand held 'iPod' like things, with a billion channels available I wonder where TV will take us? Especially as the Football, the news, and little else will have an IQ of more than 10!

Even the wireless is boring tonight. At the moment Radio 4, the middle class intellectual (they say) channel airs 'Any Questions?' One of these programmes where four people are asked to lie in their teeth if they are MP's, push themselves or their daft ideas on everyone else (If they are not) or as tonight four nobodies which means no-one cares any which way. Radio 1 meanwhile is being ignored by normal people, Radio 2 has 'Friday Night is Music Night,' a programme that was first aired I think when the Luftwaffe were passing overhead. Listening tonight I can assure you they would be welcomed back with open arms if they make an appearance any time soon! Radio 3 (the real intellectual station (I listen)) covers the 'BBC Proms!' They are now in the middle of the interlude so a stimulating talk regarding the Influence of Fascism on Italian music during Mussolini's time is pontificating in a dry fashion. Radio 5Live (can it air when dead?) has some hope as it covers the first match of the English Championship season, and Radio Scotland is playing music, again! When in Edinburgh I was amazed at the number of stations playing music! There appeared to be little attempt at all, except during the News broadcasts and that was very insular, especially if you were from Glasgow! There is a need for sensible talk and that seemed to me to be unobtainable there! It was so bad I had to listen to my sister at one point!

What was I saying? Oh yes, bored! Well I am and if my knees did not ache after my cycle ride today, why is the wind always against you when you head for home I ask, I would wander the streets looking for dropped coins. It is true, the wind is always against the cyclist! Before I leave I look to the sky and if the winds are from the west I head in that direction, however, when I head back the wind is from the east, blowing strongly and full of Siberian promise! Does this happen to others, or are the weather girls still upset at the letters I write them I wonder?

Oh I'm bored with this, as most of you are as you stopped reading long ago. I'm off to put my head in the gas oven!

Now I'm not one to Complain! However....

Watching this man traipsing over the countryside I feel I must object! For several years now he has been walking along, in all weathers, with a large brolly sticking out of his knapsack, looking over his shoulder. Why? This man has covered most of the British Isles in recent years, for 'Map Man,' 'Coast,' and 'Great British Journeys.'(The last now available as a book, probably the others are also.) The outstanding feature of these programmes is that he never remains still for a moment. If he is not wandering over a pathway unused since Queen Victoria died looking over his shoulder and talking into the camera, he is climbing something, crossing a stream, cycling, or (his favourite surely) in some form of water borne vehicle, paddling happily into the storm! Why does he never stand still? Even when he does stop to converse with an 'expert' on the way the camera is moving at all times. Blurred images are seen as an important part of explaining history (oh yeah?) shaky camera work is helping us understand why he is cycling an 19th century bike over a deep, fast flowing river. Worse, all these daft, trendy ideas are seen in the other programmes also. I have news for you TV people - it doesn't work!

Just stand still and look at the camera and appear intelligent and knowledgeable. Talking to a camera behind you makes you look desperate or daft, possibly both! Blurred images tell us you spend too much time with kids at art college and not enough time talking to your audience. And while I am at it, when the hero meets an expert why oh why do they shake hands? This programme has been researched for months ahead, cameras have talking hours to get the lighting set 'just so,' and all we see is a practiced, surprised, meeting prepared last March!
Just get on with it!

Actually I really like these sorts of programmes. They are worth so much more than the constant diet of pap that fills the screen. Soaps and antique programmes, more soaps and house programmes, another few crime dramas - which are just soaps, and more soaps fill the screen day after day! Crane at least gives us something different that takes us out of ourselves and shows us the world around us, and those who have passed by already. Such things should be memorable for the content, not the enthusiastic daftie presenting it!





To fill time while worrying about the football results today I intend to bake some of these 'Oat Rounds' following (almost) this recipe. My version may differ in that I am incompetent, however in past time I have found these nourishing and cheap oat bics well worth a try! The recipe is simple, it has to be, and found here! Oats reduce cholesterol among other things and were used by Scots raiders in time past to keep ahead of the English knights. By carrying oats in a bag, mixing it with water and heating it over a fire (they carried a small metal tray with them) they had their basic supper. Knowing how to live of the land they rampaged through the murderous English taking back what had been stolen by the thieving neighbours. English knights tried this with flour and found it turned mouldy when contacting the horses sweat. (It was kept just behind the saddle). Oats did not suffer this, and once again Scots guile defeated English thuggery. Oats gives you brains. Good eh?



last January British Gas raised its prices by 35%. This, they said, was because of the cost price to them of Russian gas. In spite of a reduction of such gas prices of some 50% in recent days British Gas have now announced, as if we are to rejoice, a reduction in prices of some 10% - at the end of March! March, as you will appreciate, is when Spring begins to show itself and heating tends to get turned off. The words 'greedy,' 'grasping,' cheating and, in spite of Conservative lovers everywhere, 'nationalisation,' comes to mind. With the credit crunch biting hard, unemployment soaring, and business costs rising high, these privatised utilities are getting rich on the backs of those that can least afford it. My gas costs have gone up with each bill, and my usage has gone down! How can we avoid using gas when the temperature in some place was minus 6 degrees last night? The fields are white with frost this morning and the only heat was found when a British Gas director passed by. He was rubbing his hands together so gleefully the frost disappeared from the field! It is time these folks read the book of Amos!

The Thick Gray Mist in my Mind

My mind is dead. There are no words flowing from the dead centre of the little gray cells, and scouting through the many news networks reveals nothing of any note upon which to pontificate or rant. There is news of course, much of it banal or routine, and it is covered by all channels and being of little worth just makes the adverts a welcome relief. However I doubt I could be bothered wasting the keyboards time if it were not for my fingers desperation to write something. Before I switched the clunking PC on my fecund digits began typing words I had not yet thought off. I consider this somewhat worrying! This, to be honest, is considered worrying by others also, especially when the aforesaid digits began doing this in the dole office the other day. I got one or two strange looks I can tell you! However, had I still dwelt in the conurbation called 'London,' not one soul would have noticed, and if they did you would not have been able to tell they were aware of strange behaviour. That's the London way!

To enable some spark of intellectual endeavour I slurped, and spilled all down me when the phone rang suddenly, wrong number of course, coffee. This brightens the mind, encourages a more 'wakened' approach, and helped not a jot! It did mean another fleece for the wash however. I have always thought of coffee as an American drink. This is because 'Wagon Train,' and all those other cowboy programmes that lied to us about 'how the west was won.' TV cops, always in New York or San Francisco it seems to me, (don't they have crime in backwoods America?) always appeared to drink coffee, and for some reason none of them ever appear to finish the stuff. I imagine there are cleaning ladies picking up cups half full of dregs and muttering foul words in the direction of the users. Possibly being America they may just smile and mutter,'Have a good day ya'aall.' But I doubt it. However those Continental chaps, you know those ones who speak in unintelligible languages, like the French and Germans, they drink coffee. At quiet times, and in quiet area during the two wars, it was known that on occasion British troops have been known to swap 'Bully Beef (corned beef to you) for German 'Kafe,' along with the other delights their respective 'NAAFI's' had to offer. Whether such acts helped or hindered the war effort I am not sure. I wonder if coffee only really became popular here after the war when 'instant' coffee became available, and folks wages also began to increase. Now I believe we actually drink a little more coffee than tea. maybe that is why we are becoming more highly strung? I doubt we could live without 'Nescafe' these days. While some say the lessening of tax on tea powered the industrial revolution there is no doubt Britain would collapse if coffee was with held. Delirium Tremors throughout out the land would be the result, and 'Cold Turkey' would not just be for the days following Christmas!

Coffee failed me, and my mind remains dull and covered with a thin gray mist. I say thin as this shows how a clearing has appeared. It was a thick fog for the past few days and any effort of thought caused an ache which I wished to avoid in the manner I use to prevent myself being cornered by those who proffer collecting cans in my direction on the street. Now that reminds me of a story in tonight's 'Edinburgh Evening News.' (Now removed as it contained the picture which could interfere with any court case) Many shops sell the Red Poppies on behalf of the 'British Legion,' and several have been swiped from such shops. One enterprising shopkeeper has posted the picture from his CCTV camera in an effort to trace the two miserable swine who he reckons nicked the cash. Good for him I say! Not that I went into a shop to buy one mind. In fact the only things that I could write about through the dense mass that comprises my brain was concerning the Great War! This is because I have read a great deal about it, and TV has gone mad over it the past few days. Repeats of many programmes, most of which I have on video already (ask an old person re 'video' kids), and I am already ploughing through some 40 editions of a magazine which was produced in 1938 aimed at old soldiers. 'Twenty Years After' was written for those soldiers unable to take a trip back to the old battlefields, places none would ever forget, and 'then and now' pics were shown for comparison. Excellent stuff, but I cannot scribble about the war again, even if the brain is lifeless. So having nothing to say I will go and lie on the floor, stare at the ceiling and cogitate on the reasons for the dearth of words.

Beijing Olympics

I'm bored already!
Just gone nine in the morning and so far the breakfast channels are awash with Olympics! Pictures of the crowd rehearsals, of massive firework displays, of athletes choking in the dense atmosphere fill the screen. There is a general air of excited expectancy form all concerned, and we are supposed to be feeling the same joy. I'm not! Those sent to report from China will have reason to be gleeful, depending on how much snake they have had for breakfast. Their only fear is the huge expense account they will attempt to explain away on their return. TV folk seem determined to enjoy the event, whether they mean it or not does not yet seem clear. I suppose that talk of Olympics makes a change from someone with kidney disease, or a celebrity breaking a nail!

We are told repeatedly that this will be a 'spectacular' opening ceremony. If memory serves me right this usually means hours of boring meaningless activity leaving the viewer who cares desperate to understand just what is actually going on! I still lie awake some nights trying to comprehend the goings on at the beginning of the 'World Cup' in France that time. Some dancer had choreographed the opening in such a manner that even the French did not know what was going on! Why bother? 'Spectacular' is this the only word the media can find for 'waste of time?' Come now, an opening ceremony ought to tell us about the nation where the event is held, the participants and what is to occur. A couple of hours at most. Usually it takes half a lifetime and fizzles out just after the beginning. But we will still hear it called 'spectacular.'

For any lazy media folk reading this my online Thesaurus suggests :-

amazing, astonishing, breathtaking, dazzling, dramatic, elaborate, fabulous, fantastic, grand, magnificent, marvellous, miraculous, sensational, splendid, striking, stupendous, theatrical, thrilling, wonderful

Hope this helps! But in the circumstances they could add, boring, puerile, and 'dull as dishwater,' as it would fit quite well.

As to the games themselves well, I may actually watch things like the hammer and the weightlifting, the high jump, some cycling and the rowing maybe. Usually, for no good reason, I watch the boxing here. I am not one for watching great lumps knock bits of one another but find I get involved with this one. No reason why and the Cubans always win. The actual running around the track for days on end bores me rigid. However this time the added attraction of watching them struggle with the gas masks will really put a smile on my face, especially in the marathon! Ah yes, the Chinese have done well in lightening the chemical works like atmosphere to such an extent folk can walk the streets for thirty minutes before being overcome. Well done China!

The streets of course roundabout will be empty of all problems. Those are being beaten to death in labour camps in the distant parts of Mao's empire. Anything that moves outwith the totalitarian despots at the helm will be well hidden from view of the freedom loving visitors to Beijing. I noted one woman this morning, during a break in rehearsals for the opening yawn fest, informing us of the advancement made by Chines economic growth, and how wonderful it all was these days. Apart from sounding like the robot we have seen so often in communist countries she forgot to add that in Mao's days we were starved to death daily, so anything is better when there is food on the table, and stuff those who have nothing among the peasants!

Oh the delights of a totalitarian regime! Which reminds me, George Dubyah Bush is off there now. What he sees will remind him of his legacy in Iraq and elsewhere, although the building in China will at least be still be standing! Communism or Bush? What a choice?