Honestly, I’m not abnormal!
Just because I never watch TV doesn’t make me weird!
I do not think of myself as a peculiar person, but there is something that puts me in one of the tiniest minorities in the country. I do not have a television. I have never had a television.
For a pretty ordinary confession, it gets shocked reactions. They usually begin with "I hardly watch it, either", go on to "Well, it’s all rubbish anyway", and end with an accusation about "being out of touch".
It is true that this is now a conscious choice, but it did not begin that way. When I grew up in Britain in the late 1960s my main source of entertainment was the radio and a collection of LPs. At college, I might watch a film on a Sunday and I did get hooked for three nights during my first-year exams on a TV version of a Tolstoy novel.
And that is it.
Maybe I do miss out on things that others take for granted. I cannot take part in that dinner-party conversation that begins "Did you see . . ?", but that is fine by me. For the most part, the effects of being a non-TV viewer are positive, not negative. If a programme is so significant that it enters into popular culture, then I will know about it. In spite of never having seen an episode of The Office I can envisage it in its context and understand why it worked.
A friend and her teenage daughter are devotees of EastEnders. When they come to stay with me in my TV-free zone, I am happy to be told the latest plot twist, but our conversation quickly turns from "will he, won’t he?" to a discussion about the choices or values behind the programme. And maybe, just maybe, we would be better off without the easy familiarity of the moving image. I know that I am quite susceptible to film and I’m sure that this is the result of it not being a part of my everyday experience. I like proper films, but I have to be careful of what I watch, because if I do watch a film, I am haunted for days afterwards.
TV is still not a part of my life. I listen to music, sometimes attend local theatre performances and read a great deal. I fill in forms for the TV licensing authority "I do not have a television licence because . . ." with "because I do not have a television".
Every so often I feel a bit guilty. Sometimes I worry that I ought to be a little more knowledgeable. But there are always some fences to be mended on the farm, or it’s lambing time, or one of the animals needs attention.
I cannot think of anything that would make me succumb. Mind you, I recall once when I was regaling a friend with stories about the vet’s latest visits. She looked at me for a bit and then said: "I think it’s time you got a television." Point taken. But I do have some vices. I’m addicted to The Archers.