Video
Usually the whole point of having a video recorder isto record programmes which
you are too busy to watch when they are actually shown. Fair enough. But if you
were too busy to watch it in the first place why should you be any less busy when
you want to watch the recordings? The result of this is that everyone with a video
ends up with an immense stock of programmes that they will never see. This process is
best illustrated when you watch the first show of a series. By the time the second
show is on, you still haven't watched the first one, which means that even if you
are at home you can't watch the second because that would mean watching the
second before the first, which is confusing, so you have to video it instead. This
means that by the third show you still havn't watched the first two and by the
end of the series you have recorded all the shows, but will never watch them because
it's too much to take at one sitting and there is something else on you want to
watch anyway.
Even if you do finally make the monumental effort to sit down and watch it chances
are that you haven't recorded it properly anyway and instead of the all important
first ten minutes of the programme you wanted what you have actually got is the
last ten minutes of an extended Nine O'clock News, an item on an organic
chicken farm in Norwich, and Suzanne Charlton standing in front of a satellite
picture of some clouds.
