One of the things I thought I’d enjoy about retirement was the opportunity to binge watch. Just sit down, relax, take it easy and enjoy a few hours in front of the television. I’m not really a box-set man though one day I will make an exception and set aside a week to watch all of Breaking Bad from start-to-finish for the third time.
Starting with Monday and I’d watch one of the five seasons a day for the rest of the week. That see me average about 16 episodes a day – I reckon that would be about 12hours a day of uninterrupted telly watching leaving just a few hours to be socialable with Mrs Jones at the end of the day.
Maybe catching the Coronavirus will give me just that opportunity! For me Breaking Bad is the finest TV series ever and doing the RV Tour is one of the things – and I’m deadly serious about this – that’ll be high up on my yet to be drawn up Bucket List.
That’s for the future though. Earlier on in the year I thought I’d find time to binge watch the Text Cricket series between England and South Africa and I hardly watch any of it.
Yesterday I decided I was going to sit down and watch the budget from start to finish. All of it the preamble, followed by Prime Minister’s Questions, the Budget statement itself, the reply from the Leader of the Opposition and the discussion by experts that followed it.
In total that’s three hours 45 minutes of viewing which I know is not everyone’s idea of fun but with me being a bit of a political nerd I was looking forward to it as the highlight of the week.
And do you know what, I just couldn’t settle, found it all a bit boring. I missed the start, fast-forwarded through the recording so I could watch it live and then ended up looking at my phone, doing a few emails, reading the paper and even emptying the dishwasher.
Coronavirus plans
There was too much at the start about Coronavirus then much of the rest of it was predictable. So much is trailed or forecast by commentators that you know what’s coming and a lot of it in reality is pretty vague. Equally predictable was Jeremy Corbyn’s response which, of course, has to be prepared before he knows the content of the budget.
The best bit in Rishi Sunak’s speech was the joke about shadow chancellor’s little read book. I laughed in the way you do during the occasional lighter moment in the eulogy at a funeral – it’s a welcome relief in an otherwise sombre event.
The most telling line in Corbyn’s speech was that Sunak and his predecessor Sajid Javid had worked for the two organisations most to blame for the banking crisis of 2008 – Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. I hadn’t realised that.
Is this just a retirement thing finding out that what you thought you wanted to do you don’t really when it comes to it or maybe it’s just life. Maybe it’s a symptom of the modern-day short attention span, perhaps I’ve lost the ability, particularly when I’m at home, to just sit still.
Whatever the reason, it’s been quite a revelation. Am I going to discover come June 29th this year I can’t be bothered to sit and watch the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, something I’ve always fancied doing.
Who knows? Time will tell I guess but it’s a shame really. I really do need to learn to sit still, wake up and smell the coffee or is it the roses, maybe both!