What I Learned From TV - February 9

 An explanation here.

"90% of onions are consumed in their country of origin. There's hardly any international trade in onions." 

Lance Stater in Detectorists 

"The sense of smell is the only sense that is fully formed in the fetus. And it's your most dominant sense until you're about ten years old, when your vision takes over."

Gardeners' World - an almost blind woman who works with trees said this

"When Coleridge's infant son was dreaming, he'd show him the moon." [I think meaning, having a bad dream]

Peter Pascoe in Dalziel and Pascoe

"Focusing on me is why I started gardening. My shrink says it's a way to tune everybody out and hear the universe. I know it sounds "hippie" but doesn't that sound nice? Hearing the universe."

A woman patient in New Amsterdam

"There are those who would say that a life devoted to food - cooking it, eating it, writing about it, even dreaming about it is a frivolous life, an indulgent life. I would disagree. If we do not care what we eat, we do not care for ourselves, and if we don't care for ourselves how can we care for others?"

An introduction to a book by Hilary Smallwood, a fictional character who writes cookbooks in Pie in the Sky

"I hate telephones. It was much better when people had to do everything by letter."

From Bergerac

And that's it for this installment. You really should see all the post-its I have! I am gradually entering them into a beautiful moleskin notebook. And when I do, I pick out some to bring to the blog. And incidentally, we moved the television back into the living room. It is colder, but it seems more fitting in there.

What I Learned From TV - January 26

From 2014-2017, I wrote a few posts on What I Learned From TV. 

This is the introduction I always began with.

Each time I do a post about What I Learned From TV, I’ll begin with the explanation from the first posting:

Now that my kids are grown, and Tom has retired, I’ve been able to go back to my natural sleep pattern which is to stay up late and get up late. Tom’s natural rhythm is just the opposite. So, he’s the lark and I’m the owl. 

And what this owl does in the late hours is watch television- not in the traditional way but through Hulu, Netflix, TunnelBear, and Acorn TV. Most of the shows are British, though I am a great fan of a few American television shows, and have been watching some from other countries now that we have TunnelBear. Some of these shows Tom will watch in the mornings, but some of them are all mine. So, when I hear a great quote from a show I know he’s not going to watch, I’ll leave him little post-it notes near the computer keyboard. I had a notion this morning to begin a new ‘letter topic’ called What I Learned From TV so I can put up some virtual post-its for you to read and, hopefully, enjoy. Some are funny, some are educational, some are wise.

I no longer have Hulu, and we stopped TunnelBear when we found out it is rather illegal to watch British shows that way! We do still have Acorn, along with Britbox, Netflix, PBS, and Prime, and my many DVDs .

But I haven't done a TV post since 2017, so I thought it time that I bring back the topic.  I keep pen and paper next to my "TV chair" and I jot things down that interest me. The other day, I cleared out a desk drawer that had myriad post-it notes with those jottings. 

Because it has been so long, many of the quotes are not from shows I am currently watching.

I did once have a television like the one in the picture above, but nowadays this is the scene (currently watching the excellent New Amsterdam on Netflix):

With talk of oil and electric prices going up, we decided some months ago to put the TV in the kitchen where the wood stove is so I didn't have to turn up the heat in the living room when I watch television in the evenings. We have liked it so much that we probably won't move it back when the weather gets warmer. 

Without further ado:

I don't know where this came from but it is quite amazing. I am one of them.

"In 1967, never before had so many Americans been under 25. There were over 90 million of them, nearly half the population."

Being a watcher of older British television shows, I have noticed a lot of griping about two particular subjects - the National Health Service, and the European Union. Here is one from Dalziel in Dalziel and Pascoe. 

"Do they sell toffee hammers anymore? No, probably banned by those clowns in Brussels." 1996 show.

"GPS is just another way for the government to keep an eye on me." US televison show The Finder. This said by a man who buries his money because he doesn't trust banks.

From Darby and Joan. 

Joan says, "I never saw the appeal of sunrises. They're just like sunsets only bloody early." Those could be my words!

From Nadiya Hussain on one of her marvelous cooking shows:

"Oh, my God, mashed potato is my favorite thing in the whole wide world."

and

"I would rather have a baby than make soufflé."

I'll end this entry with a few quotes from Horace Rumpole in Rumpole of the Bailey.

"Who was it who said that Wagner's music is not as bad as it sounds?"

Upon hearing someone collapsed while jogging. "I've always said that exercise is the short cut to the cemetery"

"No pleasure on earth is worth sacrificing for the sake of five extra years in the geriatric ward in the sunset old people's hospital in Weston-Super-Mare."