‘Sabbatical’. I was young, I was brainy, I was enthusiastic and I had my whole life ahead of me. This would not just be a new personal dawn; it would be a new personal big bang. A million opportunities, a billion things to do, a trillion chances to do something really special with my life that morning. My time to plan and achieve some things that other men my age could only dream of, stuck in their city-centric nine-to-five drudge routines, prodding away at a keyboard whilst in glass offices, floors and floors above them, faceless managers formulated Strategic HR Initiatives.
I sat down and watched Bargain Hunt.
I really don’t watch a lot of television – I’ve got so much else to do. A bit of the daytime stuff, the news, Prime Minister’s Question Time, very occasionally Countdown. Now it’s the season, I’m looking forward to Barry Hearn’s bowls coverage; the cricket will be on Sky and there are often bands playing on Sky Arts – even if I’m not into the music in question, I like to watch these for professional reasons, to pick up some tips. Repeats of Crown Court are always interesting. But I ration myself carefully – you can waste your life on such stuff. Eggheads is fun as well.
Bargain Hunt is my favourite. I think the thing that I like most about it is the sheer good-naturedness of it. Amiable people accompany amiable presenters around amiable antiques fairs. The amiable winning team is thrilled to walk away with a twelve pound profit; they give big, amiable, enthusiastic hugs to the losers, who are in the red for the sum of two pounds. The presenter wraps it up with an amiable bad joke and the whole thing will be on again tomorrow, just with different people, unless they cannot find any different people in which case they will use the same ones and nobody will notice.
There is a lot to say for good-natured, undemanding television. It is as heart-warming as good-natured, undemanding music is bland. I don’t know why this should be the case. Why should the amiable people on Bargain Hunt make you feel all warm and comfortable and pleased that they’ve done well, when listening to the equivalent sort of music – say, Dido – make you want to kill people with an axe?
I have a theory about this; a theory upon which I have been working for some time and which I think contains a germ of profundity.
That is, when the television is on, people have to focus on it. Accordingly, they get drawn in to the exclusion of all else; watching happy people on undemanding programmes causes viewers to project the scenes on which they are concentrating into a vision of humanity as a whole. We do not resent the mindless friendliness or the clunking set-ups because we know deep down that, whilst an artificial reality, it is a version of reality that might well be better than our own. Put simply, in the case of television, we see two or three amiable people on our screen and momentarily believe that all the world is like that. That is why it becomes reassuring rather than irritating.
Whereas Dido inserts secret messages into her audio recordings, telling you to kill people with an axe.
Lumped in with the antiques programmes are the cookery programmes and the property programmes, and the programmes about going on holiday, and the programmes about going on holiday to find a new property and sitting down for something to eat at the end. The shows are all interchangeable and formulaic, but very watchable. Kirstie Allsopp – the homely, comfortable long-term cottage prospect in the countryside against Sarah Beeny’s wham-bam crash pad in the city – is a particular favourite of mine. Her presenting skills give even the pokiest hovel the warm, welcoming feeling of a breast.
However, as you venture outside the antiques show community, the amiability becomes slightly forced; imperceptibly less genuine. And if you watch enough, sooner or later you will come across Max.
Max and his wife Becca are the subjects of much of the property-, holiday- or dinner-related content in the daytime hours. Stressed by their successful businesses in the City, they have a hankering to move to the countryside with their children, Harry (12) and Amelie (8), and a Labrador. The property must be a cosy olde-worlde period cottage in a very rural middle-of-nowhere setting, with all mod cons and good transport links.
Max is very tall, due to his successful business in the City, which is probably something to do with portfolios. None of the cosy olde-worlde period cottages with good transport links are quite right, as the ceilings are too low and the rooms are too small, or they are too close to a road. Becca is dead set on having large grounds around the property. These are partly for the use of Harry (12), Amelie (8) and the Labrador, but mainly because she has spotted a gap in the market and wants to set up a small studio in the old converted garage ‘for her art’. Then she will not have to be stressed by her own successful business in the City any more – which is probably something to do with recruitment consultancy – but will make an honest yeoperson’s living selling hand-crafted and beautifully-framed leaf images to a market hungry for such objets.
Max makes some compromises to get the place he wants. The presenter suggests that he can knock through from the dining room to the living room to increase the space available, making the house suitable for modern living and getting rid of all the nice-but-impractical olde bits. A Reliable Local Builder has provided a quote for this. Harry (12) and Amelie (8) are happy enough. They are hopeful of being given a quadbike, and it is fully four and eight years respectively before they discover that there are no jobs, no off-licences, and no places to meet people with whom they might have sexual intercourse but yet not be forced to enjoy a subsequent acquaintance. This causes them to move to the city and set up successful businesses, in portfolios or recruitment consultancy. The Labrador just goes with the flow.
There is a particular scene at the end of every Max-and-Becca programme. This is the ‘dinner party scene’. Max and Becca have thrown themselves into village life, and have been delighted to meet and befriend a group of solid village local types, all extremely happy as they are no longer stressed by their successful businesses in the City. We watch their perfect dinner party, with perfect jollity around a perfect country dining table. There is lots of complimenting Becca on her starter, and probably a toast. It is horrible.
I do not want to turn into Max. If there is one thing in my life that I do not want to be, it is Max. That is my aim in life – non-Maxism. It’s not much, but it is always good to have a goal.
The thing about chickens is that they are a connection to the land. My Auntie Miriam keeps chickens; she is a well-respected organic permaculture farmer and land expert living in the wild part of New Zealand. The chickens peck around her land, devouring grubs and other unwelcome pests. They give her eggs, and every now and again she wrings a neck and enjoys a delicious chicken dinner.
The LTLP has insisted that the chickens keep within a specific fenced-off point, and that should they be found pecking around her land (whether devouring grubs and other unwelcome pests or no) then it will not be their necks that will be wrung.
It is a collaborative project with Short Tony from next door. The chicken enclosure will start at the back of my garden, and then extend in a large ‘L’ shape behind my shed and onto his land. We shall share the eggs and the responsibility of husbandry. It is our first step towards setting up a self-sufficient commune for when society finally collapses in an implosion of racial violence, terrorist outrage and the totalitarian imposition of Strategic HR Initiatives.
Cleaning them out will not be the hardest thing I’ve done. I’ve been cleaning things out ever since day zero, ever since I came to Norfolk, ever since LTLP sent me to Tesco on the very first day of my sabbatical with an instruction to buy cleaning products.
Tesco in Norfolk is nothing like Tesco in North London. There are far fewer people; there is more space and a friendlier atmosphere; you are not worried that if you turn your back as you reach for a new carrier bag then somebody will artfully reach round and steal your Cathedral City. The checkout assistants wait patiently, looking eagerly for customers; they wave at you cheerfully if there is any danger of you having to queue. It is always good to support local retailers like this. And if I leave the house at the same time as the LTLP leaves for work, I can be in Tesco for eight o’clock and have the household shopping done by nine. That is the sort