This is why I am not interested, this is why I am not listening to you. It is why I glaze over and my eyes begin wandering to other parts of the room, 'that's a nice plant,' I might wonder, or, 'that guy looks like that other guy off that thing that was the thing a few years ago.' And all the while your lips are moving and the words coming out of your mouth are trying to convince me to watch this or that new series on this or that streaming platform.
It is not that I don't think that these programmes are going to be good. Occasionally you, you who are speaking, flapping your lips about this or that series, are somebody that I respect, somebody who has an opinion that I trust, but I'm terribly sorry, I am still not interested.
Television, you see, is a time killer. However good it might be it still serves one overriding function in my life and that is to suck away my hours and days and you know what? Those hours and days are a finite resource, they are the one thing that is more precious than any other.
Had I not listened to someone recently, I would not now be five episodes deep into The Last Of Us. I would not have been laying in bed at midnight yesterday night (this morning really) considering another episode, trying to convince myself that five hours really is enough sleep before getting up at six, trying to write something interesting here, and then trying to write a bit of a book, and then going to London to work for a full day wrapped up in five hours of travel. Luckily common sense prevailed this time and I was able to snap shut the lappy and switch off the lamp but the very fact that I had watched another episode when the time was already eleven o'clock was me losing the battle.
So yes, I am enjoying it, enjoying it a lot actually. It's decent, it's interesting, it has different pacing and structure to other things that I have been convinced to watch by well-meaning pedallers of time-wasting television. however, will I be glad when it is over and I can't start going to sleep at ten o'clock again? You bet I will. And if you are telling me about some series that I simply 'have to watch' and it looks like I am not listening? Then most probably I am not.
