When I was a teenager, I was given grinds in Irish by an older cousin who was a primary school teacher and therefore spoke fluent Irish. He performed this service in exchange for tea and biscuits, so it was a pretty good deal for my parents. He was 6 or 7 years older than me and, of course, when you are 17, that is a lifetime. In between making me laugh with his outrageous impressions of Peig, I quizzed him about what it meant to be fully grown-up (as Gaeilge, of course). For me, the litmus test was the news. Did he watch the nine o’clock news? Voluntarily and of his own free will? He did, sometimes.
Of an evening now, I find myself actively looking forward to nine o’clock when the children are finally in bed and Mr. Waffle and I sit down in front of the nine o’clock news with a cup of tea. The soothing tones of Eileen Dunne giving out more information about the snow represent a definite highlight of my evening. Then, the other night after the news, I watched a documentary on TG4 about Máire Geoghan-Quinn. I found it interesting.
I was chatting to a friend the other day about how there is never anything on the television. Our conversation went as follows:
Me: There’s never anything on television
Friend: We have one of these boxes that records programmes for you and it’s really great.
Me: Oh, like that tivo thing?
Her: Yeah, we’ve just finished watching an excellent series.
Me: What?
Her: No, no, I’m too embarrassed to say.
Me (thinking “Bad cosmetic surgery”?): Ah go on, do, do, do tell.
Her: No, I can’t.
Me (thinking “what could it be?”): Ah do.
Her (defensively): Alright, it’s really good actually. It’s “A History of Christianity”
So tell me, what mortifyingly worthy things do you like to watch?