I thought I'd watch Pointless. Oh no, I can't: the national broadcaster has got Wimbledon on both its main channels for - what? - the next two weeks. Why is that?
Every bloody year it's the same. All winter we get football or rugby. Turn your back on the telly after the 10 o'clock news and there's a good chance they're showing football, with overpaid numpties spouting forth endlessly about teams run by foreign managers and stuffed full of foreign players, so we can't even claim football as the working-class British boys' way to wealth and fame any more. Channel 4 regularly takes off Countdown so we can all watch the racing.
But the summer is the worst: wall to wall tennis, cricket, the Tour de France, formula 1, golf. And if it's a really bad year there will also be more football from the world cup or the endless boredom of the Olympics, relieved only by the excitement of the 100metres if Usain Bolt is competing.
But you like sport, I hear you say. Good for you. I don't. I quite like that Wimbledon gets the weans out in the street with racquets and a ball kidding on they can play for a few weeks, but I am driven demented by grown-ups who imagine watching tennis somehow makes them experts on the game - or that they miraculously get fitter and healthier by vegging out on the settee, drinking beer and eating crisps. At least, people who go and watch the golf at the course get exercise from walking about after the golfers.
Luckily, I have other things to watch on my telly: a backlog of series that I've been saving just for the summer. And I've got a decent supply of books. And an online course on the Great Extinctions in earth's history - week 3 of 5 just completed and I'm on the look-out for another course to do already. And movies coming from Lovefilm or downloadable from the iplayer or Netflix.
And given the state of the summer weather, it looks like I'll need all of these to survive till September.
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