I was raised and educated by television. If it hadn’t have been for the trade test card I would never have found the time to make myself some Toast Toppers and a dish of Angel Delight when Mum was at work!

My great desire to pass the 11-Plus so that I could go to grammar school was based purely on aspirations of grandeur and when I got there I realized that I didn’t understand (or want to understand) a word they told me. My French teacher allowed me to drop out of the class at the age of fourteen because – he said – I had a mental blockage. Those were his words. My maths teacher sat me at the back of the class, never demanded homework and just pretended I wasn’t there. Even my PE teacher gave up trying to get me on the field and, instead, left me to do my homework in the back of an empty classroom while everyone else stood around on the sidelines freezing their balls off.

The TV was my classroom. The telly in our house was never turned off. It came on at lunchtime for Pebble Mill at One and it didn’t go off until Mum and Dad closed up the house for the night. I can remember quite clearly lying awake with the sheets pulled tight under my chin and the theme tune from A Family at War drifting up the stairs from the living room below. My mother has always been a big TV-watcher, my father less-so. Dad was always more discriminating in his viewing; Spike Milligan, Fawlty Towers and Monty Python were some of his favourites. Mum was the drama queen and she made me the aficionado of 50’s and 60’s kitchen-sink drama that I am today.

I learned about history through Upstairs Downstairs, I Claudius and Edward & Mrs. Simpson. I learned about relationships through A Bouquet of Barbed Wire, Beryl’s Lot and Play for Today. I honed my ‘dry’ British sense of humour from innocuous sitcoms such as And Mother makes Three, The Liver Birds and Are You Being Served? And I developed a serious fanatical attachment to Rock Follies; waxing lyrical in my diary each week how ‘whacky’ and ‘way-out’ and ‘outrageous’ it was. Oh yes; it was TV that instilled in me a deep-rooted desire to become the kind of successful person who lounges on a white leather sofa with a Sobranie Black Russian in one hand and a Betamax remote in the other!

I’m beginning to understand that the reason I am constantly dissatisfied with everything is because nothing can ever live up to those fantasy worlds I admired and coveted so much. Being gay wasn’t like Simon Williams’ character Laurence in Agony or Billy Crystal’s Jody in Soap; living in London wasn’t a penthouse flat with wall-to-wall shag carpeting and an egg-shaped chair hanging from the ceiling, it was a disgusting little bedsit in Golders Green. But I was on my way and – back then – there was an entire lifetime ahead of me to become one of the television people I so admired.

But what happens when a person wakes up one morning and comprehends with a sickening lurch that those adolescent fantasies were realized more than a decade ago? What happens when that person hasn’t watched television for several years due to the fact that there’s nothing but ‘reality’ and crime on the main network channels? There’s only one thing for it; go to You Tube and watch excerpts from all those seventies favourites and marvel at the fact that you once wanted desperately to be a member of The Double Deckers and to dance like Peter Firth!
'The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes'.

Andre Gide, 1869 - 1951

It is, isn't it? I read it early this morning and meant to comment, but got distracted. The ABC Checklist for New Writers

Visit my website: Lorraine Mace

Fraid not, hardly watch any. No, not the television, the lively debates taking place on other threads. The ABC Checklist for New Writers

Visit my website: Lorraine Mace

Richie: You watch too many American shows! Living here in DC I have never subscribed to cable (Alas, no BBC but I refuse to pay for 200 useless channels just to see Eastenders!) so now I stick to DVD's.

A sign of the times; I entitled this post 'Google-Box' instead of 'Goggle-Box' 'The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes'.

Andre Gide, 1869 - 1951

They show a lot of American programmes here in Spain. The level of quality of U.S. TV is staggering--at least the programmes I see. I'm sure there are a lot of crappy series too.

But even the "second-grade" stuff is great. Currently enjoying "Will & Grace" and "Ed" reruns.

"Lost" is truly amazing. I'm up to the finale of season 3. Currently suffering withdrawal symptoms until they show Season 4. Don't no one tell me what's going to happen!

Oh, God, how could I forget, "Curb Your Enthusiasm"!!!!

Yes, I do watch a lot of TV, and I'm proud of it. Wish I could write as well as the writers on these programmes.

Google-box sounds like the next step for internet/TV synergy. . .

That reminds me how much I hate Ben... GRRR!!!

And thanks for the kind words! That means a lot to me.

And you're right, if I could only clone myself I'd have 20 me-s to do the writing! Or twenty times the amount of procrastination and message board posts. . . Uh oh.

As we are on a trip down memory lane, I thought I'd pop this piece on that my hubby found on one of the Audi forums he belongs to.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna/sardines from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .

As children, we would ride in cars (for those of us lucky enough to have one) with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle, or from deepwell sometimes

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......


WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K .

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem .

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
lawsuits from these accidents ..

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Football teams had trials and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!


This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

and YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers, the Common Market, European Court of Human Rights and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?! Do or do not, there is no try.



Bloggy-I Write Therefore I'm Happy

Be prepared. Be very prepared... Jen

The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. - George Bernard Shaw