When I was younger I used to enjoy travelling to distant places, but now I get the same enjoyment by reading books such as the Eyewitness guides, by typing the names of places into my computer and by watching television. When watching travel programmes I generally press ‘pause’ when there is scenery on the screen and ‘fast forward’ when there are people. An exception is the ‘Aerial America’ series on the Smithsonian Channel, which is so good I watch it all the way through. I prefer to watch television on my own because other people might not want to pause and fast-forward in the same places that I do.
I also enjoy watching films that were made before 1960. While I am watching them I am transported to a world where things are constantly happening and people can always think of something suitable to say. Then, at the end of the film, I am transported back to my own world, which is much simpler. Often I can’t follow the plot because I can’t remember who all the characters are.
When I am eating or washing dishes I usually listen to quizzes. The one I like best at the moment is the Chase because there are so many interesting questions and because many of the questions are phrased so that I can work out the answers when I don’t know them. Some quizzes, like ‘Sale of the Century’ and ‘Who Wants to be a Millionnaire’ I don’t watch because there is too much waffle between the questions, but when I watch the Chase I can avoid this by using the ‘ fast-forward’ button. I tend to prefer quizzes that don’t have the word ‘celebrity’ in their titles.
It seems to me that something like television quizzes could be used as learning machines. The places where one question ends and the next begins could already be marked, so that users can delete the questions to which they know the answers, then go through the remaining questions over and over again until they are familiar with them.
What I enjoy watching most at the moment is the 82-hour version of my collection of scenes from the 1980s and 1990s. Most of it is unfamiliar because for a long time I have watched only the ten-hour version. The picture quality of the longer version is better because it hasn’t been copied so many times. I occasionally collect scenes from more recent programmes, but they tend to be not so good.
I can’t understand why so many television programmes are interrupted by advertisements. If people want advertisements they can find them just as easily at the ends of programmes, and if they want information about particular products they can find this more easily by using the internet.