Turmoil On Television
Newcastle Herald
Friday November 10, 2000
TELEVISION has a much bigger role in my life than any other inanimate thing.
Wherever I go in my home there is television. Even when the damn thing is off it is there, a giant black eye that demands eye contact with mine.
But it is the management of television in my home that takes most from my life.
I have become the TV policeman, the enforcer, the ogre, and I have just realised how far my infamy has spread.
`Your name came up in my loungeroom the other night,' a fellow I barely know said to me recently.
As you will understand, I feared the worst.
My name had been invoked by his daughter, a school friend of one of my daughters, when he had demanded that his children find the TV's remote control. `That's just what Mr Corbett does,' his daughter had exclaimed in protest. `He just stands there while everyone else looks for the remote.'
'Tis true. That's exactly what I do, or almost exactly: I sit rather than stand.
Funny, I thought, that my refusal to look for the TV remote control would rate a playground discussion.
My daughter had not, it seemed, explained why I refuse to look for the gadget, which is what we call the remote.
I insist that the children find the gadget because the children hide the bloody thing.
One will slip the gadget under a cushion or behind the stereo or in a vase when she leaves the room so she can retrieve it on return and thus retain control of the screen. Queen of the screen.
So rather than spend 20 cranky minutes searching for the gadget I call a halt to everything until the gadget is found.
And rather than spend 20 equally cranky minutes trying to ascertain who had the gadget last, or even who was watching TV in the room, I call them all in and resolutely ignore their protests.
And while they're searching, and blaming each other for hiding it, I read the TV guide.
(On the odd occasion I have found the gadget under the TV guide, where I left it the night before, and on every one of those odd occasions I have done what every ogre would do: I've slipped the gadget under the loungechair.)
Same goes for the TV guide.
There are TV guides for everyone else, which they can never find, and one for me, which I hide so I can find it.
I put it on top of the grandfather clock, where it's out of the reach of all bar one unauthorised user.
The trouble is that when it goes missing, and everyone swears innocence, I can never remember with certainty whether I returned it to the top of the clock the night before.
Not that the kids are allowed to watch television in the front room, where all this drama with the gadget and the guide takes place.
Their television is in a room out the back with its own remote if they can find it and its own television guide if they can find it.
The reason is that when their mother or I sit in the front room we probably won't want to watch television. And we especially won't want to watch what they're watching.
We could, of course, simply ask the child or children to turn the TV off but that is easier said than achieved. And when it is achieved the flouncing and muttering takes the edge off the achievement.
Solution: Children must not watch TV in the front room.
They do, of course.
They watch it in the front room during the day when I'm not home.
But they're not allowed to watch television during the day in any room. Weekdays or weekend days.
I do, though, pretend I don't see them watching a music video-clip show on Saturday mornings.
And I rumble only mildly when the TV's on during a rainy day.
The trouble with such lenience is that the first spit of a passing shower and the TV springs to life.
My objection to daytime TV is twofold: First is my adamant belief that television is a sad waste of daylight, second is the puerility of the content.
A bar on daytime television requires vigilant enforcement.
So does the bar on weeknight television.
Well, Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday nights during school terms for high-schoolers.
The threatened penalty for breaching the Corbett household's television code is the loss of television-watching rights on weekend nights.
Threatened, because by the time the permissible television hour rolls around, 5pm Fridays, I've usually forgotten what penalties I've meted out to which television watchers.
It's not easy being an ogre.
© 2000 Newcastle Herald