This TV here in this here living room has something like 200 channels and most nights there’s nothing on I like.
The reason I keep saying “this here” is because most of the shows are American and they keep talking about this here and that there and it’s getting on my wick.
Should that be wig? I don’t care, right? Go away, let me have my rant and come back when you no longer hear the sound of breaking glass.
Yes, I know that’s a line from an American film but I can’t remember which one either. Maybe it’s the enforced shut-in that makes me grumpy.
Bah, it was ever thus. I just usually hide it better but what can you do to pass the time that doesn’t cost a fortune, make you fat or upset the missus?
Heck, that’s a difficult one when you think about it. It’s not as if you can even get out from under her feet. Still, there’s always the Saturday evening ritual of variety TV.
The Voice is the best talent show on the box and its format allows it to continue even through a time of social distancing. The Masked Singer, though, is badly conceived, childish, unfunny and a waste of a precious hour and a half that you will never get back.
I don’t care if Americans do love it. They also love taking diners’ plates away while people at the table are still eating and dem darn Yanks also don’t know how to spell colour, pyjamas, cheque, doughnut, kerb, tyre and favourite. And they spell A&E as ER.
All these various lockdowns have been a chance for some to catch up on their board game skills. I know people who have taken up Monopoly and chess again. Mrs X has gone all hi-tech because she does word games but hers are all phone apps.
Me? I like word games but I like to hold them or, if it’s a crossword, just fill it in with a pen.
So we have these long silences in our house as she stabs away at her virtual keyboard and I battle with the mighty Press and Journal crossword until I become totally exasperated.
The other day, I sighed loudly, threw down the paper and said: “I’ve been stuck for more than an hour. Six letters, a broad road in a town or city. I still haven’t got it.”
She goes: “Avenue?” To which I roared: “No, I haven’t. Now stop rubbing it in.”
I have another one for you. What do you call it when you wake up early in the morning with a rumbling, shaky motion, your bed shaking and your dog being “disturbed”?
Well, I would call it the after-effects of a good night – the kind of evening our parents warned us not to have.
That is what the people of Poolewe and Gairloch felt like the other day. The funny thing was all they’d claimed to have had the night before was Horlicks or hot milk. In Wester Ross? Yeah, right.
When I read that online, I thought a lot of west coasters have been breaking restrictions. What an irresponsible shower.
The next thing I saw was that the British Geological Survey was reporting an earthquake at 5.42am centred on, you guessed it – Diabeg, Poolewe and Gairloch.
Blimey. You really were shaking, rattling and rolling over there. Sorry, I thought you were all moaning because you had all been on the sesh. My mistake.
Of course they would not be partying over there. They are not irresponsible idiots – like our students! Have you seen the latest figures about how the supposed leaders of tomorrow are acting in the middle of a pandemic?
They are supposed to be clever, yet they get together and party and become infected and pass it on even though they mostly don’t have symptoms. They just don’t care. I know I do go on about it but what are they playing at?
It should be board games like the rest of us. People need to be doing something to exercise the grey matter if they are going to spend more months indoors.
Now I see there are all kinds of competitions for people to invent their own games.
That’s a good idea. I wonder if I should enter the board game that I developed years ago.
I called it Bonopoly. It’s quite similar to Monopoly but it’s where the streets have no name.
