Daytime TV peril
IN case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been these past few weeks – and even if you haven’t, I’m going to tell you – I’ve been at home convalescing. I won’t tell you what was wrong with me – too boring.
For someone who has worked all her adult life, three weeks at home lazing on the couch was ... well ... a little disturbing.
Watching daytime television, you see.
It is astonishing how many advertisements there are throughout the day for your own funeral planning.
Funeral insurance people must think anyone who spends her time watching daytime television is near death ... or has no life and is eagerly awaiting the release of death.
Every 10 minutes, up popped a mature couple on the screen (looking much younger and more sprightly than me, I must be honest) to tell me how imperative it was to plan my own funeral.
For around the same price as a cup of coffee each week, I could give my offspring peace of mind, knowing that when I pop off, they would have no pesky costs to pay for my burial.
Funeral flowers alone would cost them hundreds of dollars, didn’t I know that? More importantly, didn’t they know that?
In between morose advertisements for funeral planning, it was cacophonous “infomercials” for everything from kitchen storage containers that double as lids, to a bra with no underwire but of such superior technological support, it guaranteed to lift your boobs even if they were dragging on the ground.
“What kind of gullible fool falls for these infomercials?” I said to the dogs, lazing on the couch with me. “Only naïve daytime television viewers would believe in a bra so industrially advanced, it could elevate my bosom.”
Three days later, as I was taking delivery of the industrialised bra and a set of 100 kitchen containers, I thought it might be time to start planning my own funeral.
Or at the very least, switch off the television and turn on the marvellous new e-reading device bought a couple of months ago.
Oprah had told me the week before to read Half the Sky, an important book about abuses of many of the world’s women (sex trafficking, forced prostitution, gender-based violence ... easy reading.)
“You can make a difference by reading this book,” Oprah said – and within seconds I had purchased it on the e-reading device all without leaving the couch.
Two days later, shattered from reading about rape and honour killings, I turned to Jeffrey Archer for light relief but felt guilty leaving all those abused women behind.
There was no choice but to turn the television back on and start some serious funeral planning.
