11 May 2014

Rain at last. Lots of it. I am hiding inside with blanket and hot water bottle. My digestive system once again in spectacular turmoil. Last night I slept for 14 hours. More or less.
Generally, I feel I should use these times of immobility for deep thinking and reading and mental improvement and so on. But why? I mean there is no exam at the end of it and my chances and willingness of moving up the career ladder are zilch. Not that it matters. Not following a career path is obviously the consistent motto of my life. I like a bit of consistency from time to time.

No, what I need to do right now is watch online tv. In 2010, watching Brothers & Sisters carried me through some very nasty times despite my child's disgust and persistent attempts to get me interested in more meaningful programs (Flight of the Conchords, Black Books, Summer Heights High). I stuck to it until that woman who had breast cancer back in thirtysomething lost her memory after a car crash. Thankfully, my health was getting better by then and I was able just in time to realise that I had been watching utter rubbish. 

But then again, thirtysomething is one of the few memories I have of the last time we lived in Dublin, a year of full time work (with career options staring into my face), my child unhappy in a crappy school, my man hoarse and tired from teaching adolescent boys and my lovely mother in law dying of cancer. I know we all did try our best but that year is a blur. 

In my memory, I am either driving through Blackrock on a rainy Sunday morning listening to Walking in Memphis and crying after visiting my beautiful mother in law in hospital. 
Oh, I loved that woman. Or I am switching between Irish and UK tv channels following two different series of thirtysomething episodes while making up a knitting pattern to copy the cardigan of that university professor guy, the blond one with the beard who gets killed in the end. 

It was not a happy time but there you are. In the end, R spread out the job offers on the kitchen table and we threw the dice.

My tv analgesics of choice today are Endeavour and Mammon.  So far so good.

3 comments:

mm said...

What a good piece of writing and I'm very sorry you're poorly.

I just loved thirtysomething! Saw it when it first appeared on UK tv in, I think, the late 1980s and it was one of the welcome distractions that got me through some very bad months.

Wishing you well as you go through your current stuff. Glad I'm not the only one who uses TV as an analgesic in extremis when nothing else works. (Hinterland and Vera are my current fixes).

Fire Bird said...

My grandparents lived in Blackrock! Sometimes I wish I had a tv and / or tv license... but I do watch iPlayer a bit.

Sabine said...

mm, you do remember the padded shoulders and the dungarees, right? But still, it was great show.

Fire Bird, you are a quarter Irish then? Ever been there? German tv is , well, different if you like it synchronised. So I end up watching the original stuff online, probably not altogether legal.