Television, Facebook and Rugby!

It's Six Nations Cup time again. For those who don't follow rugby, that's the competition between teams from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France and Italy. England and Italy are playing in the first match as I type. I've just looked up and noticed that England is winning. In the background I can here the gentle (though not always) snoring of my husband who had settled down on the sofa to watch. I could easily turn the sound off or change the channel but he might just wake up and would expect it still to be on. Instead, I find myself drifting into an altered state of reality, the sort you find yourself in while waiting for a bus (in England) or a bank teller at lunch time, or even a Greek ferry.

My mind seems to alight on the strangest of thoughts. Friends on Facebook is one of them. I joined Facebook to have a better understanding of why my students liked it. I just about get it. However, I don't get why I would want to accept an endless number of 'friend requests'. When I first got them, I thought why not and so I find myself with a small number. Just recently, I started questioning my acceptance of these requests. Did I really want to have former colleagues, who I didn't really know when they were my colleagues. Now that they have moved on, I am unlikely ever going to see them again...and I don't really care. And students! What student would want a teacher as a friend. I certainly never would have! And I certainly don't want to be friends with my students. Never. Not even 10 years from now.

I find that this whole question of Facebook friends is closely related to my Christmas card list. I send Christmas cards to a group of people, some are relatives, and I want to continue these links; some are friends, who I haven't seen recently but would like to meet again; and then there is the group I feel guilty about, the group I would like to drop but don't feel I can in case they think I have a terminal illness, or worse still don't care about them anymore. I wouldn't want to hurt any one's feelings.

If I gather all these Facebook friends, I will be in exactly the same position as I am with the Christmas card list, falsely pretending that I care in someway about these people. I just can't bring myself to do it. However, I am left with this niggling feeling that when I reject some one's attempt to make me their friend, that I have hurt their feelings anyway. Then again, perhaps they don't want to have me as a friend either. Having sent the request, they may suddenly think, oh no, why did I do that! I have to stop worrying about this. Instead I shall think of something else until the bus arrives.

I found myself thinking about television programmes the other night. For some inexplicable reason, I decided to change my profile on my blog, update it or something like that! It must have been late at night because as long as their is daylight, I don't stray off into such meaningless activities. Anyway, back to the point. I had a look at "My Favorite Television Programmes" and realized that none of them were on TV anymore and so I should change them. The problem was that I couldn't think of any. What did I watch that I enjoyed and would look out for another week. Alas, very little. However, I do watch television so what am I watching and why!

Television isn't structured quite the same way here as it is in North America. We don't have programmes that start in September and go onto the spring. At most our series are 12 weeks long. More likely they are on for 3 to 6 weeks. It adds variety but I always seem to discover a series in its second week and then forget about it in the 3rd, only to catch up with it for the end. I am left with the feeling that I haven't got the entire picture.

I have developed a serendipitous relationship with television. Having discovered channels that sometimes have the type of programme I like, I will try those first. Why don't you use a guide, I hear someone asked. Well, I never seem to be able to find all the channels laid out in a logical manner in one place. I usually end out spending so much time looking for something to watch that I miss the beginnings of programmes. Just as confusing as missing episodes!

While I'm on the question of television programming, I have noticed that the types of programmes on mainstream TV have changed over the last few years. When we first arrived in the UK, there were tons of house and garden makeover programmes, and cooking programmes were gathering a pace. Then we moved into the house redevelopment stage where people were trying to become property developers. Gardening returned to its more serious side and food programmes followed celebrity chefs through various food trends. From there we went to programmes helping people to move somewhere else and start a new life, usually in the country or even 'down-under'. Somewhere along the way, people became worried about what they ate, and we were treated to programmes about how our chickens and pigs lived before they came to our table. Funny, no vegetarian cooking programmes yet, though you'd think they would be popular after the chicken and pig shows. Several chefs have shown us how to cook frugally, and Jamie Oliver showed us how badly our children were fed at school and then he showed people who didn't know how to cook, how to cook.

I watch some of these programmes and once upon a time, when I went to work, we would carry on the conversation about what we had seen the night before. However, even that culture has changed. There are just too many channels for there to be some sort of conformity in what we watch. No conversation starters there!

So where does that leave me with updating my profile. I'm not sure. However, I have started to rethink the actual activity of watching. I think I have TV on just for the noise. If that is the case, why don't I just turn on the radio. Good question and food for thought tonight.