You may well have witnessed me rant on several occasions (I could stop this sentence right now and it would be true but I shall clarify further), about the insulting nature of mass market Saturday night TV. Fear not, I am not going there again. Nope, instead I balk today at the insulting nature of mass market Sunday night TV.
I am couched at this very moment wrapped in the cloying banality of The Antiques Roadshow. If television were a pair of corduroys then this programme would be them…..in beige. It is the epitome of middle class, Sunday evening, have a small sherry, Daily Mail reading, cardigan bedecked, tartan slipper wearing (checks own feet, it’s ok mine are blue), Giles Brandreth liking niceness that is served up every week, all year round it seems, to remind everyone that the weekend is nearly over, and we are all about to be hurled back into the hell of a new working week.
Preceding this, Songs of Praise is about as enjoyable as Aled Jones is svelte. Not very. I haven’t looked but I will bet my love handles that later on ITV will be some retro fitted milder than Korma storylined dross set somewhere oop north, starring someone who used to be in Eastenders. Nope, I lie, it is on NOW!!! The Royal. This is the bastard love child of Nick Berry and Tricia Penrose, and is about as intellectually challenging as a Rubik’s cube with all the same coloured stickers on it.
Please, Mr TV executives, let’s shake things up a little. We don’t HAVE to vote for things on a Saturday, and we really, really don’t have to be averaged to death on a Sunday night either. If it were not for Sky+, I would be roaming the streets of Bolton with a sawn off shotgun taking people out for watching Countryfile.
That said, if you didn’t know, in just over a week, I will be subject to American TV for just over two weeks. This parade of adverts, separated by the odd punchline or news story is quite novel for someone like me, visiting for a short while. I suspect if I lived there, I would be roaming the streets of Orlando with a sawn off shotgun taking people out for watching the Appliance Direct advert.
So has there ever been a more tenuous set up to get onto the subject of my holiday? Probably, about this time last week.
Preparations continue, most come with a cost, namely Louise braving the Trafford Centre on a very wet and windy Saturday which meant that everyone within a fifty mile radius of the place had decided to do the same. She returned with some clothes, which will now mean that we can go the entire holiday without looking at or purchasing any further items of clothing right?? Right???
This weekend I have gotten my planning folder out (yeh, like you don’t have one too) and been through everything from where we are sat on the planes (all four of them) to doing a Google streetmap view of our Travelodge hotel near Heathrow. Worryingly, it isn’t actually finished on the street view thing, but I am hoping things have moved on since then!!
Regular readers of this and the oft referred to trip reports will know that I undertake a strict health regime prior to holidays to ensure I arrive in the sunshine state with a body like Ricky Martin. No, sorry I meant Rick Waller.
This year, I am shredding. I am spending twenty minutes every day with Jillian Michaels in my bedroom, and at the end of it I am sweating and out of breath like you would not believe. I’ve been at it now for over twenty days, and as you can probably envisage, I am ripped and toned in a way you can only dream of.
This DVD is a toughie. It isn’t one of your Davina (insert any other minor celeb DVD released each January) put one foot in, one foot out type namby pamby nonsense. No this is hardcore torture, so much so that I have been limping for the best part of two weeks having done untold damage to my left ankle on about day five. Being ever so slightly OCD about doing this every day for the thirty days required, I have somehow soldiered on with a mix of determination, grimacing, ice packs and ibuprofen.
The injury is getting better now, and I’ve able to give it full welly again.
So, I enter my final full week at work. It is funny that having endured so long since booking, these final few days feel like a lifetime. Up until now the remaining days have nothing silly in them, like trips to London or other such strange places. They are just filled with the usual mixture of banal meetings, and regular disasters to resolve.
How I shall feel a week on Tuesday at around 6pm as I drive home I cannot put into words. If you hadn’t guessed this is when I finish. It is also Emily’s sixteenth birthday, so a double celebration will be had that night.
So next Sunday shall be last bloggage for some time I suspect. With the writing of trip reports to get done on my return, I may suspend bloggage for a time so that I can get that done as quickly as possible. We’ll see how that works out I suppose.
I’m off now to put my foot through the TV before Fiona Bruce gets any more smug.
Till the next time…..
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