It's all relative

Last night M asks, as he cooks lentil and chard soup, whether there's anything on the 'tellybox' (this is what people from the 70s call it, I gather). I go look it up. Of course there is stuff on, but most of it, as usual, appears to involve a) football or b) quiz/reality/talent shows designed and presented by obscenely well-paid people which dangle transient fame or potentially-large-but-almost-certainly-small cash sums in front of the kinds of people willing to abase themselves on camera in pursuit of the same. I have zero interest in the former, and the latter make me feel kind of hollow inside.

Well, I said, Miami Vice is on at 9?

Maybe I was still stuck in my A-level reverie. I remember my Geography teacher looking me up and down when I first turned up in the sixth form in my regulation grey suit (the grey was regulation, but the suit itself was up to you) and saying 'how come everyone else looks like they're at school and you look like you're auditioning for a part in Miami Vice?' I was secretly very pleased. Not quite as pleased as I was four years later when I was sitting on the Backs in my dungarees, reading Kate Millett, I wouldn't be surprised, and one of my friends came by and said 'how come everyone else looks like they're at Glyndebourne and you look like you're at Greenham Common?', but still.

Anyway, we watched it. It was kind of shit, of course. Ultimately harmless, probably, though I have even less faith in my 15-year old taste than I used to. And Colin Farrell can't hold a candle to Don Johnson circa '85. At least, so I thought till I did that Google images search.

joella