"Let's Watch A Film Together As A Family" Says The Wife And Daughter......I'd Rather Not

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

It has been a wet and miserable Easter Holiday weekend. In fact as I'm writing this it's 3:54am on Easter Monday...and it's raining. But this occurs the previous day. The wife has cooked an excellent Sunday dinner. No denying this. But once the dinner has been eaten, and we're seated in front of the TV she says the words that strike fear into my brain.

"Let's Watch A Film Together......"

Now personally I would have rather watched something online. There would have been some free sports stream somewhere. Or I could have listened to something whilst wife/daughter enjoy a movie. Or (and this is what my body was beginning to tell me) I could have just taken a nap.

But of course she does not say "Let's watch a film together". What she says is "Let's watch a film together.....as a family". To me they are dreaded words. Because it's very difficult (not impossible but very difficult) for wife, daughter (who is a teenager) and myself to find something that we can all enjoy. And the person who causes the most problems.....is me.

Wife's/daughters tastes in movies seem to have merged together now. Mine however has resolutely stayed still and then gone into reverse. Not interested in holiday blockbusters anymore, or crime or indeed anything taken as a whole. I even bought a Radio Times Film Catalogue in Harlow (admittedly for £2.50 from the original £25) in the hope it might inspire me to go through the listed movies in the same way as I would be happy to do so in a library. But it hasn't worked. In fact the last film I really really liked (and I've bought a copy on Amazon video) was Julie and Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

And my reference to a library is important here. Because as regular readers to this blog will know I'm happy as I grow older to go random on what I read. It doesn't mean I'd like it you understand, but I'd give it a go. But movies? My instinct is to go all Trump and a build wall from them entering my mind.

Being so resolute in my disinterest means that I can't generally choose the film for us to watch as I'm disinterested. The Catch 22 of the couch potato.

Even so. Here I am trapped into watching a film I don't want to watch because not watching it means in their eyes I don't care about the family. And the thing is, even if I was more tolerant of most movies the choices of wife/daughter I'd find difficult to watch anyway. A few weeks ago the film was "We Bought A Zoo" starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johannson about a guy who, (surprise,surprise) buys a run down old zoo in California. It's not a spoiler alert to say that the only real surprise was not that the story was "based on true events" but the zoo is in England.

I wished I'd taken a nap in that movie. Yesterday I did take a nap through the movie they watched (though in fairness, as I'd mentioned in my previous post I'd woken up too early in the morning because of insomnia and after a full meal sleep had caught up with me). When I woke up with about twenty minutes remaining they looked at me as if I'd just announced I was leaving them to shack up with a woman half my age.

Doubt I would have liked the movie they saw anyway. Goodbye Christopher Robin was telling the story of the troubled relationship between the creator of Winnie The Pooh A A Milne and his son (Christopher Robin), Thing was, I knew about that already and (whisper it gently) as a child I preferred the Disney films to the original stories.

But of course that didn't matter to wife/daughter. What mattered was that I'd lost an afternoon of spending time "as a family". Whether I'll regret it in the future time will tell but to be honest, at that particular moment I didn't really care.

Until the next time.