Wednesday 14 December 2011

Channel 5

Popular opinion seems to say that no-one ever watches Channel 5 (ok, that'll have changed in under a year . . . football . . . Thursday nights . . . Man. U . . . ITV must already be in tears) . . . but I digress.
Those US movies that they show on weekday afternoons: wouldn't it be an idea to show the first ten minutes, in which the conclusion becomes clear, then the last five, just to wrap things up and prove the point? God forbid it'd leave more time for their news broadcasts (as produced by Sky News, the most vulgar of news channels), the male presenter of which can't be arsed to wear a tie . . . and why ad breaks ten minutes into a movie? Need to adjust the aerial, I think . . .

Sunday 11 September 2011

9/11

To coin a phrase, it was one of those 'once-in-a-lifetime' moments . . . but you can't class a day as a moment? Or can you? I was in Germany that week, staying with relations near Hanover.
We'd spent the best part of three hours assembling a black ash computer desk for the kids, using the instructions which consisted of just line graphics with a few words of Italian . . . but we finished the task, and with a sense of accomplishment, cracked open a couple of well-deserved beers. As we raised our bottles, Stuart came in, with the seemingly unrelated words "Quick . . . TV . . . two planes . . . Sky". On went the TV, followed by what must have been 30 minutes of stunned silence . . . and the rest, as they say, is history. Has that really been 10 years today? Time is both our friend, and our enemy . . . God rest all those who perished that day.