Publish and be damned
I got something published (albeit in a free paper).
Below is what The London Paper (one of the ones they hand out at the station) printed on Wednesday in ‘The Columnist’ section.
Today is the twenty first day of an experiment to answer the question ‘Can I live without television’
Television has been my constant companion since I was a teenager. I have happy (well, not unhappy) memories of spending an entire school summer holiday watching back to back episodes of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. My dad recorded the series for me on our, top loading, steam powered VHS recorder. Each day I could watch the entire series twice. From this you can gather two things - 1- I am, to this day, word perfect with the first two episodes and 2- I had no friends.
TV has seen me through the boredom of my student days, the peaks of my first proper relationship and, inevitably, the troughs of my first proper breakup.
I am now 36 years old, have been married for eight years and have recently started having a nagging feeling that I may be watching too much telly. It’s safe to say that barely a day would go by (or even an hour of my non work life) without tuning in and switching off.So my experiment is to see if my life would be better without the delights offered by Freeview. Would I be able to survive without UKTV History and the strange looking ‘almost made it’ presenters on News 24?
At first I struggled to find activities to replace the tube. Local news papers figured mightily in my evening routine - its amazing what they find to fill an edition of the Kent Messenger.
Just recently however, I have found that my wife and I have been having conversations. I am sorting out little jobs I would normally try and cram in at the weekend.Without my daily dose of telly I have started feeling a strange disconnect. This feeling of being slightly outside of the bottom end of popular culture goes hand in hand with my sense of superiority over those who must keep their daily appointments with Eastenders, Loose Women and … actually I am now struggling to remember another popular program… Bargain Hunter?
Last night, for the first time, alone in the house and with the still, cold bulk of our unused box balefully staring at me from the corner of the room, I realised that it needed me more than I needed it. That I am, if not free, on the path to freedom.
Then I picked up the Maidstone Advertiser and read all about a brave pensioner and her battle with Tesco followed by a heartwarming story concerning a cat and two fish it didn’t eat.
The cat was called Mr Christmas.
Strange to say that some small part of my happiness might be bound to such things, but the SMS vote attached to each days’ column showed 100% of the people who felt it necessary to text their opinion to the paper, liked it!
Written by exmonkey on March 9th, 2007 with
5 comments.
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#1. March 9th, 2007, at 12:07 PM.
When my kids say “Daaad, can I watch telly?” and I say “No”, the very next thing they say is “Daaaad, can I use the computer?” In other words, it’s nearly as bad, maybe I should give up the interweb!