Saturday afternoon and I'm doing the ironing.
This is not the future my 20-year-old self envisaged all those years ago. But I'm okay with it. Even if ironing is one of the most vile duties known to man I realise it has to be done. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone else (1).
Anyway what else am I going to do? J has gone off to Glasgow to speak Esperanto all day. Both Daughter Number One and Daughter Number Two have stated categorically that they have no interest in leaving the house because they'd rather spend all day staring at the tiny screens on their phones. And I've finished the book that I'm reading.
The TV is on over in the corner. I'm not really watching it. It's on something called Movie Mix. I didn't know we had a channel called Movie Mix. It's showing a 1980s TV movie about Grace Kelly. Is that Cheryl Tiegs playing Grace? Not sure. Didn't she replace Farrah Fawcett Majors in Charlie's Angels? (2)
Ian McShane appears. He's playing Prince Rainier. I start idly recalling everything I've ever seen Ian McShane in (3). Lovejoy obviously. Was he Richard Burton's gay lover in Villain? He definitely played a Teddy in Sexy Beast. A right nasty git. There was an Elmore Leonard book where the bad guy was called Teddy too. What's that about? I've never met a bad Teddy. Then again, I've never met another Teddy.
That's my brain at work. A rolling ticker tape of half-digested, often inaccurate, gobbets of pop culture and non-sequiturs. What sort of state is my brain in that it throws up this stuff? What has my memory chucked out to retain a partial recall of McShane's IMDb filmography? A working knowledge of the history of the Crusades? Some vague conception of the theory of relativity?
In their place I've a notion that Mr McShane once appeared as a football manager in some British movie maybe based on Brian Clough; a film I've never seen but remember being reviewed on Film 79, of Film 80 or whatever by Barry Norman. Or Michael Parkinson. Or someone.
I don't think this is a senior moment, by the way. I just think I've pushed so much gunk into my head over the years that some of it has seeped down the back of my brain (leaving a nasty stain on the inside of my skull, no doubt).
This is what you get for being a child of pop culture, I guess. I know some things about nothing much.
At least I've got fresh shirts for the rest of the week though.
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