1st of April, 2003 ANTE·MERIDIEM 08:13

And in an interruption to our normally scheduled mind-numbing computer crap, I’m going to join Helena in declared fandom for ER. I mostly end up watching it because it’s on at a time when I’m watching television—i.e. 9.30 PM on a Sunday evening, when I can’t go out, because I’m working tomorrow—but I’m starting to make the extra effort. That’s something to say, because I never care enough about a TV programme, even a good TV programme, to organize my life around it. (That said, I missed most of it last night :-).

Why? Because goodly pieces of it are well-observed, they seem to have been written in (if they were written in at all, and aren’t aspects of the respective actors’ characters) by someone who noticed these aspects of people’s behaviour, who went “Oh, that's why they do that, and I bet anyone else in their place would do the same thing.” So, last week’s episode, Weaver wipes Kovač’ name from the board at the start—it’s spelled “Kovach;” at the end, he goes back in, and writes his name with the caron.

Abby, too, seems to have a low tolerance for bullѕhіt, and to me that rings true as something people acquire when they drink too much and still keep a decent semblance of a life together—you can see it in Anne Robinson too, and I had it at one point. I’m not remotely an alcoholic personality any more—more’s the pity, it makes life more interesting—so I don’t know if you can say I still have it.

Those are the bits that resonated with me; obviously, wide swathes of the plot I have no opportunity to criticize thoughtfully, so I have to take them on trust. Maybe they are winging it with them—for example, I don’t know of any personal acquaintance in a lesbian relationship, so I have no yardstick to measure Weaver’s behaviour by—but what I can judge is excellent :-) .

What else ... I spent the long weekend—I was owed paid leave, so I took a long weekend :-)—shopping, playing truth or dare, and being grumpy at my brother Robert, in Wexford. Sorry I missed the party, Conall. (This was written on my laptop on the bus journey up from Wexford. Life is good :-)