Viewing Intentions that Never Really Come to Pass

It’s a bit of a shame to start the year with a filler post like this one will probably be, but here we are. Events conspire, a lovely family evening out last night, a computer that, this morning, hums, stalls, and refuses to co-operate, a house full of Christmas decorations that really have to come down. The result is a level of apathy that leads the lazier part of my mind to say, ‘Leave it for today, Ken. Just stick up an old post and it’ll be easer next week.’ But that won’t do. It’s the start of a new year in everything, including blog posts, and either I’m going to do it or I’m not and starting the year without saying anything at all is sending a negative message to the brain.

And we can’t have that, can we? Down with negative messages to the brain.

So, here I am, among the lingering detritus of Christmas past, tapping into a patently un-co-operative laptop. Not in the hope that I will produce anything worthwhile but rather in the hope that I will produce anything at all and, as a result of that, next week may be better.

Trolling my mind to see that I might fill the next ten paragraphs with, I think of the double edition of the Radio Times. This hallowed document, so anticipated and so carefully consulted over the season, currently lies at the top of the green recycling bin out at the front of the house. An item that was a revered portent of the holiday to come is now only so much pulp. This reminds me of a post I wrote sometime around the middle of last year about sun loungers by holiday pools. How valued they are at 10.00 am compared with how unheeded and unwanted they are by four-thirty. Things can lose their value and potency really quickly sometimes.

But that’s not the point, if there is indeed to be a point. We did that one last year and, doubtless, we will do it again in some other form before December comes around again.

No, the point is about all the things that I intend to do over the ten-day Christmas break and how very few of them I find I have actually done when I look back on a lethargic Sunday morning like this. This could be explored in any aspect of the Christmas season, long walks, deep thought, cheese-eating or, indeed, writing. But the neatest area for examination is, as usual, telly-watching.

This, I tell myself, will be the time when I will catch up on all the films I missed over the past year. I arm myself with some temporary subscriptions to streaming services and consider all the delights that will be enjoyed.

Excellent.

Except, deep in my heart, I always know in advance this will not be the way it all turns out. The guys, home for the holidays, and generally in the room with us, are not really into serious movie-watching. One or two is fine, but that’s pretty much the limit. And I’ve done this enough times now, to know how it will pan out. And that is how it did turn out. Despite my own personalised intentions, the season has come and gone without very many new movies having been caught up on. Instead, telly-watching has been a ‘common-denominator’ affair comprising mainly of quiz shows and Taskmaster episodes saved up from the last series. Jools’ Hootenanny takes up New Year’s Eve very nicely and the other evenings are mixtures of Gogglebox episodes summarising the year, University Challenge Christmas Specials, Only Connect, and Morecambe and Wise repeats.

There are two things to say about this.

The first is, I love it. It’s the perfect way for us to do some Christmas viewing. Who wants to be embedded in the middle of some dull movie anyway? The quizzes interact with us as we try to keep up with the quizzers and sometimes succeed. All in all, my lack of new movies is the best unfulfilled promise in the whole world and roll on next year when, circumstances permitting, we may all have the pleasure of doing it again.

The second thing – less important – is how I deal with the time when I am left alone with the telly and how I use this time. This generally occurs early to mid-morning, as I’m a fairly early riser where others are not. Here is the moment when I can catch up on some French movie delight. I’ve got the time, I’ve got the technology, let’s go! Except… nah!

What actually happens is that I flick around and land on whatever ancient movie the terrestrial channels happen to showing at that moment. I dip into things I have seen hundreds of times before. This year, for instance, one nine am rendezvous had me deep into The Towering Inferno, reflecting how Steve McQueen had gotten the meatier role. He was constantly leaping from one horrible scenario to the next. In one notable moment, he held onto a brave firefighter by his fingertips while a helicopter lowered the detached scenic lift they were on, slowly to the ground. After they were down, McQueen pumped the guy’s hand twice, like he had won the office raffle, then hopped straight  into a waiting red estate car and off to the next disaster. Incidentally, When that helicopter dropped him on the roof of that lift, how did it get close enough to the building to get him on there without the rotor blades shattering on the walls? Also, it was cruel in the extreme that poor con-man Fred Astaire magically found true love, moments before the lady who was the object of his affections fell solidly to her doom.

My Fair Lady (aged poorly), The Poseidon Adventure (belligerent), Willy Wonka (great first 30 mins), Fiddler on the Roof (downer), Bridge on the River Kwai (wide widescreen), An Affair to Remember (ends abruptly). These are the type of films, or part of films that make up my Christmas viewing. The promised new releases will be seen in small doses through the coming year. Twelve months behind everyone else but who cares?

The upshot of it all is this. The things I do when I inevitably fail to do the things I thought I’d do at Christmas. Well… they are the very best things of all.