What are we gonna watch?

What are we gonna Watch ©

By Michael Casey

In the old days when I was a kid we had a black and white tv, a kind of box with controls at the side, there was a grill under the screen this is where the sound came out. It was sound, not stereo or Nicam nor Dolby nor anything else.At night when we went to bed Jean our black cat had her opinion on tv. She sat on top of it for the warmth it held, a tv was as big as a microwave back then, just to give you all some idea of the dimensions, bigger in fact but you get the idea.

Nowadays we all have lcd tvs, just as we have lcd monitors on our desktops, or we have thin laptops. Its funny when we see an old film and it has huge old fashioned computer monitors. I remember them from 1978 when I started as a computer operator, I also remember getting my 1^st flat screen monitor. I sold my old new unused large and bulky monitor to the taxi driver at the hotel. He arrived at our house in his jaguar and but the monitor in its box on the back seat or was it in the boot, then he drove me to work on a Sunday at the hotel, CPNEC. Those were the days, me and the drivers bonded, but that’s another story.

Now back to the story, what do we watch on tv now, we are spoilt for choice, by the way the tv screen in hotels are made in such a way that there are redundant if not attached to the hotel broadcast system, in other words they are not worth stealing. As for you and me at home we now have so many channels that you need a GCSE in planning in order to get the most out of our Sky+ or Sky Q or the Virgin this or that. You have to scan down the tv guide to see what’s on and will it clash with the Man U game for him, and Bake Off for her, and the Mongolian Wrestling for Granddad and Grandma on Sky Arts, introduced as ever by Melvin Bragg.

Thankfully every platform has a way of recording a show or two or three while you watch one Live Show as my wife calls it. Though some people are in relative poverty as the politicians might call it as all they have is Freeview, which only has 40 channels, such utter and abject poverty, we should hold our heads in shame until everybody has Sky, I’m sure they’ll be questions in Parliament about the TV Poverty, and maybe they’ll be an Act of Parliament, and eventually all of us will be equal with 300 tv and radio channels in tip top stereo and 4K.

And what will our kids say when we have this equality, and they are saying it already, Why is there never anything to watch on tv. Yes that’s what they say, in USA I guess they have 1000 channels and the same chant goes up, There’s never anything good on tv. Bribes have to be given and exchanged so that what we want is on the main family tv, or the only tv in our house.

If I give you a can of Stella Artois can I watch Bake Off, and if I give you a Cadbury’s Crunchie can I watch Grimm and Sherlock and Blacklist back to back. Ok, I’ll give you 2 Crunchies and some sherbets, but I’m not sharing my Dr Pepper. Don’t tell mum that DIY makeover is on or she’ll hog the tv and make us do more homework. She’s still livid we only got 98% in our last 7 tests, she says she ashamed of us and did not tell Grandma in Shanghai or she would have had a heart attack and died of shame.

Then we wouldn’t get any more clothes especially chosen by grandma, I’m conflicted now, as mum really should watch her favourite tv, and maybe then grannie would NOT keep on sending us those clothes she buys on Chinese Amazon, I’m sure she’s colour blind.  

Once the family is gathered round the tv dad is sent out in the pouring rain to buy sweets and pop, the Polish shop has bottles of 2.25 litres so its better value, and the family can burp even more thanks to the extra .25 litres. Then the family eats Polish snacks chosen by the pretty design on the packaging, dad cannot read any Polish after all, even if the staff always talk to him in Polish.

So a family is united around the tv, 98% will have to do for now before Shanghai mother rounds on them in Mandarin and Shanghai dialect telling them to hit the books or she will sell the tv. But not before Grimm is is finished as she thinks Nick is cool, and her daughters both want to marry Monroe when they grow up, a werewolf in the family would be nice. Meanwhile dad has a sneaky pint of Stella Artois while fending off Totoro the cat.

When all the tv watching is over the tv is switched off, they really must find time to watch the 40 films they have recorded. As for Totoro the cat she has been watching the gymnastics and has worked out a way of sitting and sleeping on a lcd tv, and that would explain why every morning there are cat’s whiskers on the tv, and wasn’t how tv’s and radio were invented in the first place. To get cats to come in off the garden fence at night , a warm tv was the perfect bribe, you just ask John Logie Baird, that’s why he invented tv.