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| The height of modernity. |
Mother watches Corrie, Emmerdale, as well as Dad's Army repeats and every banal quiz program and she will NOT miss any of them, defending her viewing choices like her life and that of the planet depended on it. There's no point asking to see anything else, because her choice is "right" and "going against it" just provokes another of her tantrums that get more venomous by the day.
She hasn't actually ever seen a whole TV program at any time in my memory, because she falls asleep as soon as it switches on, but she won't let me have a TV in the bedroom, because, she says, I might fall asleep in front of it and that would be a danger. She won't let me watch her TV "unsupervised", despite my age (51), 30 years of living alone and never having had this dreaded mystery TV accident yet, but starts whining it's too late some time around 9 pm. Ignore that and she huffs and puffs and remarks how late it is all the way through a program, otherwise when she wants to go to bed, it goes off and the plug comes out.
One of the reasons I’m not allowed to watch her TV alone is because it isn’t hers, it’s rented. It’s been rented almost since John Logie Baird first invented it and is fit only for the skip. Who the f*ck rents a tele in the 21st Century?
(When she died, the rental company did tell me just to chuck it!)
If I try to go to the living room to watch anything, the cats want to come with me (and they'd make a noise or scratch the carpet if I didn't let them), but I still don't see the program, because she talks incessantly and constantly shouts at the cats – even if they're doing nothing at all. (She wonders why they hide from her?)
A couple of times when I first got here, I started watching a program I fancied, but she demanded the remote (which I was not allowed to touch again) and when it was not something she'd already marked on her TV listing magazine, she either changed channel to what she wanted, or just switched the TV off, even if I was sitting there, clearly watching. There's usually some haughty comment about, "we don't want that" and, if I say “speak for yourself, I was watching it”, I get a diatribe about how awful and unsuitable it was. (This coming from someone with the "superior mind" to watch Corrie, Emmerdale AND game shows!)
Hence, I just don't go anywhere near her, the living room or the TV to avoid all that unpleasantness and the earache of her constant bitching. Not by choice, I saw a couple of minutes of local news (well, the insulting, dumbed down, wonderful Britain biased propaganda / infotainment crap) at meal time, otherwise, I've seen only one or two programs a week - "approved" exceptions that did not clash with her other choices - and the odd items via the BBC iplayer, but the "cheapo" broadband over the faulty telephone line won't always play them.
And, sadly, she's worked out that the computer works as a TV too, so now she's in and out of my room every five minutes just to make sure I haven't fallen asleep, so now I can't even relax and watch anything in peace in my room either.
In the end I just told her that the computer switches itself off.
Things are a LOT worse than even the hell I imagined. Truly, this is nothing. The unprovoked attacks and venom have had me crying down the phone to friends more than once. Last week, for the second time, mother said that I and my cats can get out. Said she would have us thrown out in the street and just stood there screaming and pointing at the door, adding things about rotting in hell, not caring where I went or what happened to me, waving her finger in my face, calling me a liar, hurling more insults and telling me that I need a "brain doctor."
Now she’s an expert on deciding who needs to a psych referral?
It must be a qualification she got from all that intellectual TV!
