Family Tv Time

Family TV Time ©

By

Michael Casey

They used to say that the family that prayed  together stayed together, I think you can also say that the family that watches tv together stays together. In our house it is a family thing, we watch tv together. The joy of Sky+ is that you can stop tv and go make a drink and then restart it. You can go to the bathroom or answer the phone and all will be well, you won’t miss a thing, because you have a hard disc attached to the tv.

So technology allows you to stop the tv and eat as a family and then restart the tv, or watch a recording, the hard disc can hold up to 40 films and more. The act of sharing the film together, or sharing the soap together does bond the family. In the olden days, in the good old days we’d all gather around the piano and sing songs. Or when radio arrived we listen to our favourite shows, as a family.

Watching films with my Shanghai  girl brought us together, and then though her English was at first limited I knew my wife was clever because how we could talk about films. And this did in due course lead to us being married and starting a family. So tv lead to family which then led to family tv watching.

I suppose in America we’d go watch a game or  play some sport, over here we’re not as sporty, we certainly are not Australian either. So tv watching is what we all do as a nation, and in our house as well. If you have a young family as we do the tv is the reward, and education too.

So one daughter has read 100 pages for me, the other has had done her homework, so then they can have some tv. So we have a great tv package from Sky, but what do we do, we switch the tv off. I don’t miss out though as I can record was I want  and watch it out of sync later. When the homework is done then the fun can start, but for the life of me why is Peppa Pig so popular?

Snacks make an appearance, fizzy pop too, or a very occasional Stella for me, this is tv time, family time. Everybody stocks up on their favourite treat, it might be  oranges freshly cut and arranged on a plate, weird and wonderful Korean or Chinese snacks, whatever we all fancy. The wife may have bought some fancy cakes on her way back from the shops, we are almost like people at the cinema. Everybody must be the same, everybody has lcd tv nowadays, so we all sit back and enjoy the show with our snacks to hand.

Many years ago when I was single with no cares in the world I bought a fancy tv with nicam stereo,  just when it first appeared on the scene. So this was our toy and joy, after 14 or 16 years it died, so we got our flat screen tv. Which was 1/3 of the price of what I had paid for the first generation nicam stereo tv.

So in the home, as my Shanghai wife calls it, at home everybody else might say, remember prepositions are altered when English is your 2^nd language. At home we can all have a pseudo cinema experience, this is fun, just as it was in the 1960s and 1970s, when I was growing up, and family tv  watching  the norm. This I try to preserve now with my own family, switch off the family computer and let’s gather around the tv and share the viewing experience.

With young artists and musicians in the house tv watching can become noisy as we debate about this and that, and pass snacks and drinks this way and that. It’s a busy experience, but it’s a shared experience. Its Family TV Time.