what's on tv tonight

What’s on Tv tonight? ©

By Michael Casey

Well we were all watching tv tonight and we ended up with a very good selection. We saw a hour documentary on the Singapore hotel, it was 10 times bigger than the one I used to work at, 2500 rooms in Singapore and yes I think we all should visit it. You can google and find its name in seconds. It has 3 towers with a surf board and infinity pool on top.  As a former hotel worker it was very interesting for me, my daughter could see the kind of work I used to do 10 years ago. My Shanghai wife lived and worked in Singapore 20 years ago, before she met me, and we changed our lives together.

Next we watched a programme on Mammoths in Russia, this was very interesting, this was another hour, my small daughter is thinking of being the next David Attenborough so this interested her a lot. I told her she’d have to get a PhD if she really wanted to do serious study in these subjects.

Now they are watching Chocolat a film set in France, I’ve seen it before so I’m talking to you all instead. So why am I sharing our family viewing habits? Simple, just as the family that prays together stays together, so the family that watches tv together stays together. The family unit is better if it has something in common and is not a collection of strangers with the same name living in the same house.

Your best friend and his brothers may come around to watch the Manchester United game as you have the biggest tv, they bring Polish lager and sausages to keep them going while they watch, they say hello to their little sister in the kitchen as they steal a few bananas. She calls them all monkeys and they all make noises like monkeys before they go back to the tv room. But this is family, they build the house you and their and little sister are living in. Now till the end of time they will come around to watch the Manchester United game, wasn’t it a great idea to put a huge satellite dish on the roof.

All over the world families of all kinds gather to watch their favourite shows together, this is family. Nowadays more families gather to watch Karaoke shows together than go to church together. Perhaps priests of all sorts should practice singing like Sinatra, then there would be more bums on seats. Though I would not advise that the congregation hold up score cards after each sermon.

With modern technology we can time shift our viewing, record and  watch later on, even days later on, but I contend that the family viewing is a good thing, it bonds families together, when we are all spread all over the place all over the time a central time to watch tv bonds families. If you add food, either formal or informal then you a FAMILY.

My mother used to say when we watched a film and the ending of the film was rubbish or of beyond belief that the ending was “far fetched like shit from China”, I had to explain that one to my Shanghai relatives, it means beyond belief only, would a Shanghai person bring bicycles from Birmingham?  No that would be far fetched, like bollocks from Birmingham if I reversed the phrase.

So in a way was the way I met my Shanghai wife far fetched? And was my mother a gypsy and predicted it without even realising it? Though she never met my wife, and it was only because my brother saved my dad’s life and I spent 3 years of constant daily visits to the old people’s home that something far fetched happened. Something that could come from a tv show, all the way from China. I’m sure I can hear my mother laughing  in Heaven.