What's so awful about daytime television?

Generally, daytime television seems to get a bad press, that it's cheap, lazy, time-filling programming, watched only by the elderly, house-bound, students, the unemployed and those who have nothing better to do with their time during the day. Which may be true, up to a point. The BBC doesn't do a copy of what ITV does with their programming, and manages to put out a fairly wide range of programmes from when Breakfast ends at 9.15 a.m. to around when the evening news is broadcast at 6p.m. If anything there seems to be an over-abundance of shows related to antiques and selling houses and make-overs. 'Homes Under The Hammer' is at least worth watching if only to see how prospective developers manage to make a good (or bad) job of restoring and decorating houses that at first glance are little more than disaster areas. It does at least encourage people to do up properties which were wrecks and so add to the housing stock instead of green space being built on. It's always interesting to see the results of developer's hard work and effort and it's not all about making vast profits from selling the properties in question. On the other hand, another house-selling show comes on mid-afternoon on BBC1, 'Escape To The Country,' where couples with more money than sense, having decided they want to give up city living and sell their homes and move away to some idyllic spot in the countryside. The presenters show them three properties which fit certain criteria, such as it has to has space for granny or grandpa, room for a herd of alpacas to graze, or perhaps have stabling for several horses or ponies as well have an ample-sized kitchen and perhaps views over rolling hills, meadows or the sea. I often wonder if they're just keen to show off their homes to their friends and family, and buy somewhere they can retire to which has far too much space and umpteen bedrooms which their guests can use when they visit perhaps once a year. Do they never think, when they're viewing these fantastic country properties, how far the nearest supermarket is, or the doctor's surgery or indeed, the nearest urban settlement, how much farm traffic they're likely to encounter on their way to work (wherever that may be) when they're very likely to be stuck behind a slow-moving combine harvester, tractor and trailer or herds of sheep being moved from one field to another, or even what it's like mid-winter then there's six foot of snow and the roads around their beloved property are closed off due to drifting show or there's ungritted road surfaces to deal with.

The BBC has a couple of shows which use recycling as the basis for their format, such as 'Money For Nothing' where the presenter, who is usually a designer/maker, visits a tidy-tip or recycling centre in a town and search out pieces of furniture and other material which people are bringing in to be scrapped and manages to remove these items before they are skipped. Then it is taken away to be restored and redesigned into new and improved pieces of furniture or whatever. What makes it remarkable is that these items, once they're tarted up, are sold on at profit and the money made is given to the people who dumped the items at the tidy-tip in the first place. A good example to us all that what we throw away and might find useless can become amazing once restored and given a new life, so saving them from land-fill.

There are some daytime television programmes which are useful, not merely in the schedules to fill up space. One such might be 'Fake Britain' which is sometimes shown in peak viewing time. It deals with consumer matters, mostly about items which are fake (hence the title, obviously) and some are items which you wouldn't otherwise think of as being faked, such as passports, electrical equipment such as hair straighteners, mobile chargers as well as websites which offer tickets for concerts and shows at knockdown prices but which turn out to be worthless. Also, all manner of scams which would go unnoticed until shows such as these alert the public to them.

Antiques seem to be something of an obsession on daytime television. 'Bargain Hunt' has been around for what seems like ages, first presented by David Dickinson and then Tim Wannacott, and more recently, since he left, it has been presented by a wide range of antiques experts which keeps it fresh and lively. Two teams of couples are given £300 to spend in an hour on antiques at various venues across the country and then attempt to make a profit at auction. Each team has an expert who helps them select their items and then, once they've bought their three items the expert spends what's remaining of the £300 on a bonus items which the teams can either accept or reject at auction. You can actually learn quite a lot from these sorts of shows as the experts discuss the various antique items the teams select. I had never heard of many of makers such as Lalique, Moorcroft or Clarice Cliff before I began watching this show. Later in the day there's 'Flog It' and later still, 'Antiques Road Trip' which is a programme where to antiques experts cross the country and stop at various towns with antique shops in them to buy items which are then sold at auction. The profit made is then given to charity.

There are now far too many gameshows on both channels. ITV has three which run one after the other, 'Tenable,' 'Tipping Point,' and 'The Chase.' It just seems cheap and simple for them to churn out this stuff, nothing wrong with either, although some of the questions on 'Tipping Point' and embarrassingly easy and an insult to anyone's intelligence, for example, 'what colour is the sky?' or' which month does Christmas fall?' Why do so many of the gameshows have such garish sets? The set for 'Tenable,' for example, is a really bright green. All have similar digital graphics and almost all have equally annoying sound effects, particularly when contestants win or something else happens during the course of game-play. Repetitive sounds which really get on your nerves, to say the least. 

Crazy Daytime Television

Watching a great deal of daytime television over the months, it's made me think of new formats for programmes. There are lots of shows about buying and selling, antiques as well as houses. People with an obsession about moving to the country as well as Australia. There's probably far too many, but that's another story. Just turn these formats on their head and you get some interesting ideas. 'Pointless', the gameshow, which is on at teatime, took the idea of people knowing about obscure answers, and thus, getting the lowest score,  unlike 'Family Fortunes' which was the opposite, getting as many points on answers to certain questions got higher scores and if so, you'd be a winner. Why not a show where people who've moved to Australia suddenly decide they want to move back to the United Kingdom? In 'Wanted Down Under,' families put themselves through the hoop travelling all that way and deciding whether it's a good idea to leave family and friends behind in Britain to move all that way, find a job and then a home to live in. I just wonder if some people are just going on the show so they get a free holiday to Australia, a nice week stooging around, looking at houses and talking to people who might or might not give you a job. All that emotional upset, leaving granny or grandpa behind, missing friends and neighbours, but think of all the problems of moving to the other side of the world. Then there's the other shows, 'Escape To The Country.' Instead of selling up and moving to a rural cottage, with a kitchen which is far too big, with acres of land, room to keep a pony, a tennis court and a huge lawn which needs mowing every couple of weeks, Do these people who go through all this trouble take into consideration what living in the countryside consists of? How far is the nearest Tesco branch, or Sainsbury's? How far away is it to the nearest shop if you run out of milk, what is it going to be like if you move to a house half-way up a hill in the Yorkshire Dales, how are you going to cope when you get woken at 6 o'clock in the morning by a cockerel crows, a cow moos or sheep start bleating? Or, if you are late home from work in the evening, caught behind a tractor and trailer or a herd of sheep or cows being moved along the narrow lanes around where you live? So, let's have a television show about people who get fed up with life in the country and decide that they want to 'Escape To The City.' They just long for a home where you can stand up straight and not hit your head on low beams, long to be able to walk on nice, clean pavements instead of muddy pathways, have lots of choice when it comes to finding ideal places to buy their milk, don't have to worry about having a broadband connection, and don't have to be woken in the early hours of the morning by cows mooing to be milked or cockerels crowing. Instead, they're woken by car alarms going off and not being turned off. They don't mind having to find a place to park and getting a parking ticket.  Oh, the joys of being oh so ironic!

We'd come up with another sort of 'buying and selling' show. Instead of buying something and selling it at auction and attempting to make a profit (such as in 'Bargain Hunt, 'Flog It,' or 'Antiques Road Trip.) the contestants have to either 'skip it or sell it.' Some of the stuff people buy in these shows is really good quality, but you could buy real tat, something worthless, kitch, and you have a panel of people who have to decide whether the item is worth keeping or whether it goes in a  skip or is crushed in a crusher. You could go through someone's' home selecting the items to be skipped or sold. A good way to clear a home of clutter. Perhaps, instead of having a skip, you could shoot the item out of a canon into space, or you could put it on a wall and throw balls at it until it breaks. Just think of the worst-possible gift someone has been given and is sitting at the back of a cupboard and they don't every use it. This could be a good way to get rid of it. It might have horrible memories in some way or other. 

Even More Television Annoyances

Why do the credits at the end of so many television shows have to be rushed through so fast? How on earth are you supposed to be able to read at that speed? Then, not only do they insist on speeding the credits through at high speed, but they have to shrink them down by putting them in a narrow window at the same time and you get a voice-over which tells you what the next programme is or some other television show. So why do they have to treat the credits in this way? It seems something of an insult to all those who have contributed to the making of the programme that has just ended, not just the actors but the production staff and other creative personnel. It's almost as if they're not important enough to be given some sort of recognition for the work they've done as regards the production that has just finished.

At one time dramas on television used a minimal amount of music in their productions. Obviously you'd get music as the programme started, the opening titles and at the end, over the credits. You didn't get a lot of music used as incidental to the action. Probably such shows as 'The Onedin Line' had the very distinctive music at it's opening and closing and it probably had quite a lot of music over scenes of ships and the sea. But today we seem to have far too much music. Is this another bit of American television's influence on our productions? It can be over-used and in some ways it's become something of a cliche to have a hidden orchestra bursting forth as the action on screen gets dramatic. It's almost as if the director can't allow the audience to think for itself. The problem with all this music is that in some cases it can drown out dialogue. There was much controversy some while ago over the BBC production of 'Jamaica Inn' where viewers were complaining about the actors not speaking clearly. I find it difficult to believe that actors were unable to be understood because they weren't speaking clearly. I know from working in theatre that it's one of the most important things that an actor has to do and that is to be able to speak clearly and be heard. When I worked in rep (and, yes, it's around 45 or so years ago) none of the theatres I worked in used microphones for the use of the actors. Most big musicals use amplified sound and the actors have tiny microphones hidden in their costumes and sometimes in their hair or even stuck to their faces. As a result it means that the sound engineers can balance the singing voices with the orchestra or band. It means that nowadays actors don't have to worry about speaking clearly or to be able to project their voices to the back of the auditorium so every audience member can hear them. It also means that if actors have no real experience of working in theatre and only concentrate on television and film work they can then rely on sound engineering and all the paraphernalia of sound production without worrying about their ability to project properly.

I seem to have wandered slightly from the main subject of this blog post, but the matter of actors being able to speak clearly does connect with television sound and the over-use of music and the reliance of sound being over-used in dramas and other television productions.

My final moan is regarding the use of what I imagine must be library music. In a lot of shows, particularly documentaries and lifestyle shows, particularly those about antiques, is the repetitive use of some very familiar music. No doubt it's because they might not have to pay a composer to write original music and then fall back on using library or 'stock' music which doesn't require the production company to pay a royalty. But the same bits of music seem to appear regularly on things like 'Antiques Road Trip,' 'Flog It,' 'Bargain Hunt', and 'Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.' Just becoming very annoying and repetitive. I bet if you watch a lot of these shows, usually shown during the day, you will notice this music and how it's over-used. Come on producers and other people, do give us a break from this monotony.

Road Trip

A really sunny and bright day today. We've been on a road-trip, visiting some really interesting and quirky places. We have so many strange and interesting places around this country, those little gems that are often hidden away and get missed, but often get highlighted on television programmes such as 'Bargain Hunt' and 'Antiques Road Trip' or a number of history or other types of programmes. The other day on 'Antiques Road Show' they had an item which purported to have been written by someone who had experienced performances of some of Shakespeare's plays and had made copious notes in a tiny note book. At first I had seen this on Facebook and, because it was April 1st, thought it was an April Fool's hoax, but when it came up on this television show the expert who discussed it with the man who bought it along to the show, it seemed as if it was a genuine item.

Anyway, we packed up some rolls and drinks and drove away on the A5 towards High Wycombe, visiting West Wycombe  and visiting the hill on which can be found the mausoleum of the Dashwood family as well as the interesting church with the golden ball on the top of the tower. The view from the top of this hill is quite impressive. You can see down into West Wycombe and Wycombe Park which is a National Trust property (which we have visited in the past but wasn't open today, unfortunately.)  In the other direction you get a good view along the road towards High Wycombe and the hills in the distance towards London.To get to the car park near the church you have to drive up a road which is quite steep but it saves having to walk there, which we have done in the past when we had our dogs with us. The drive towards Wycombe goes through the Chiltern Hills and is really beautiful and made even more so at this time of the year with the trees beginning to put on their leaves and daffodils and other flowers in full bloom.

View of West Wycombe Park from the hill.

From West Wycombe we went to a village called Nettlebed. The very name sounds intriguing. What does the name conjure up to you? To me, a vast area of stinging nettles, the very bane of my life as a child, because wherever we used to go when we were playing, in and around the farm where I grew up, there were always great areas of these plants, and if you so much as went near them, you got stung, on your hands mostly, or your arms, or legs. Not necessarily painful, but you got nasty raised rashes which irritated considerably. Anyway, the reason for visiting this place was to see a bottle kiln, a strange-shaped structure, looking very out of place in a cup-de-sac which had modern houses in it. How on earth this strange structure survived, I have no idea.

Bottle Kiln at Nettlebed

We had bought our SatNav with us, which was just as well, because without it we would never have found this place. From there we went to Turville, a charming village which has been used as a location for three very well known films and television shows. We parked some way out of the village as we couldn't find anywhere else to park. It was near a wood which I think would be covered in bluebells in a few weeks time. We must come back to have a look and take some photographs. There is a windmill on a hill over looking the village, used years ago as the home of Caractacus Potts in the film "Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang" and then the home of Jonathan Creek in the BBC 1 television show which starred Alan Davies. One of my favourite all-time television shows, incidentally. The village was used as a location for the situation comedy which starred Dawn French, "The Vicar of Dibley." I'm not sure they used any of the houses as the vicarage in the show, but what we saw looked very familiar and no doubt the interiors were modelled on one of the cottages we saw, which would have been filmed in a television studio, I think at Pinewood or Elstree, not too far distant from Turville.  It was really funny as we walked into the village, as we saw a lady who said 'hello' to us as we walked along. She was a lady vicar. Somewhat of a coincidence, as "The Vicar of Dibley" is about a lady vicar, as played by Dawn French, that is, if you didn't already know that. We went into the church, a really charming little building. Again, not too sure it was used in the television show. From Turville we travelled a few miles to a village called Stoke Row, to visit a really unique construction, called The Maharajah's Well, apparently funded by an Indian Maharaja, of Benares, Ishee Pershad Naryan Singh. I had never heard of this, but Carol had discovered it whilst doing a Google search, and it seemed a rather strange and intriguing thing to visit and photograph. We had a coffee in the local shop/café and then sat and had our rolls, sitting on a bench near the well.

The Marahraja's Well at Stoke Row

We drove home, the day being quite exquisite, the weather behaving itself and giving  us a fine and sunny day to enjoy or road trip. We drove back towards Milton Keynes and stopped at a branch of Tesco near Bicester and bought drinks, used the toilets and bought a rather nice Easter egg and continued on our way home.

Escaping Another Marathon

With the possibility of being stuck in Eaglestone due to the fact that yet another marathon is going to thunder past our front door, we drove away early up the A5 to visit one of the many and various retail outlets, Heart of the Shires Shopping Village which have sprung up along this road in the past few years just beyond Weedon. We have been there several times before and it's a pleasant enough place with small shops selling a wide range of products from clothes, kitchen wares to plants, flowers, and antiques. We had coffee and cake, a good, old-fashioned stand-by for us, as you will have realised if you've read and followed these posts avidly. I presume this place was previously a farmyard and the restaurant was the farm house. A good enough use for such a house. It was hardly busy at the hour we were there, no doubt because it was a Bank Holiday Monday and most people would have hardly been out of their beds. You will have also noticed that we don't hang about and seem to make a habit of arriving excessively early for things. I for one cannot see much point in wasting a good day off, with the sun shining, lounging about in bed, so arriving early is always a good idea as far as I'm concerned. We wandered around looking in the various shops. The antique centre was worth browsing in but quite frankly the objects on offer are really over-priced, probably because such television programmes as Antiques Roadshow, Bargain Hunt, and Antiques Roadtrip have made people aware of such famous names as Lalique, Moorcroft, and Clarice Cliffe, which, to be honest, I hadn't heard of before watching any of these shows. Several of the shops have gifts in them, such as teddy bears, cards, and other items, but a lot of the stuff is just rubbish and you'd find it in most places which attract tourists. Really naff ornaments that are only fit for a skip to be perfectly honest. Am I being snobbish? Probably. I have to say the quality of some of the stuff they sell here seems have gone down dramatically, which is a pity. Some of it is rather like the low-quality souvenir gifts you find at some seaside resorts.
We didn't stay too long. We intended being out of Milton Keynes until gone midday when the marathon was scheduled to end and the roads in and around Eaglestone back to normal. We drove back south on the A5. Carol said she had seen a signpost to another place off the A5 as we drove north just south of Towcester. I wasn't sure exactly where it was but she was certain. We came to a right turn which was actually quite difficult to see. You could have gone past if you didn't have particularly start eyesight. The sign was for The Old Dairy Farm Craft Centre. Another one of those places which don't seem to advertise too frequently and if we hadn't seen that sign on the A5 we would probably not been aware of. We drove along a rather narrow country lane and came to the village of Upper Stowe and eventually came to the Craft Centre. The houses around here are of local stone, very similar to those in the Cotswolds and we soon parked in the carpark. We wandered around the small shops within the site (presumably, like the Heart of Shires Shopping Village, a former farm. Well, 'Old Dairy Farm' does give things away.) A lot of really nice hand-made products, such as jewelry and pottery items, as well as paintings and prints. We eventually decided we'd need something to eat as it was now around midday, so we went into the restaurant on the site, The Barn Restaurant. This is a really attractive barn conversion which was really busy with people coming and going, which suggested to me that it must be popular. Also, like Waterperry Gardens, which we visited a few weeks ago, popular with bikers. We had to wait at the door to be shown to a table upstairs, a good deal quieter than the downstairs area and ordered toastie for me and salad for Carol, all very well presented and cooked. Another very pleasant place to visit and to recommend. Out of the ordinary and not like a lot of 'chain' establishments which are taking over the high street of many towns. It's good to find somewhere that is quiet and has a uniqueness about it.

We drove back down the A5 and by the time we got to Saxon Street we saw runners along the Redway, which suggested that there were stragglers finishing the marathon. But by now the sun was shining. The weather has been mixed all Bank Holiday weekend, but at least we've managed to make the most of it.

Visit To Brackley

A fine sunny Saturday morning, which meant we didn't want to be stuck indoors. After some consideration as to where we could visit, we decided to visit Brackley, which is where we were heading last weekend when we ended up at Buckingham Garden Centre just as the weather became stormy and we got no further. Brackley is one of those places that we shoot past on the dual-carriageway and seem to ignore. You see it signposted but never seem to visit. I think it would have been one of the places you would have driven through in days past. We are surprised at how much petrol costs at the moment: around 99p a litre, so we filled up at Morrison's service station on the way past. I think everyone else was doing the same when we got there as there was quite a queue of vehicles when we turned in.

A rather attractive door which caught my eye and photographed for no other particular reason in Brackley.

So we drove away from Milton Keynes along Standing Way and eventually to Buckingham and out on the road to Brackley. This is a town we haven't visited before, but I had an idea it would suit us as it is one of the locations used in many of the television antiques shows we watch on television, such as Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip. We managed to park the car just off the main street and walked towards the centre of this attractive town, first visiting a very well-stocked book shop. Try and keep either of us out of such places is quite difficult as we always seem to gravitate towards books and bookshops. We could have spent quite a bit in there, but we resisted the temptation. At least, we know another independent bookshop when we want one. As much as we like Amazon and being able to buy books online, and the ease of finding what you want, nothing really beats being able to browse books in a bricks-and-mortar bookshop. We then went into a branch of Costa, which was virtually opposite the bookshop and then found a rather convenient map of the town in a square outside Costa. We had an idea that there was a large antique centre somewhere in the town (used in Bargain Hunt.) and found it on the map, so we followed the directions on the map and found it wasn't far. It turned out to be a particularly large and very well stocked place and Carol saw and then purchase a rather nice glass rabbit ornament, similar in style to Lalique glass, and for a very reasonable price. On our way back to the car we found a really nice shop which sold all manner of original artwork and had a chat with the young lady who owned it. She told us about Brackley Artisan Market which was coming up on the 3rd April from 10 a.m to 3 p.m. in the market Square and something we might very well come back to visit as it sounded the sort of thing we'd enjoy.

Gas Boiler Replaced

On Saturday morning, I decided I needed to find out what the position was regarding the boiler being replaced or repaired so I rang the landlord. His wife replied and said we'd be telephoned when he came back. No doubt going to the different plumbing stores to get prices for a new boiler. We had been told that it wasn't actually worth repairing and as such wouldn't get the safety certificate in it's current state. We got a call around 45 minutes later to tell us that he had got a company to come out for Monday morning to install the new boiler. We were keeping our fingers crossed that this was actually happening. As a result, we decided we needed to get out of the house. Carol's week off, for Half-Term has been somewhat spoilt by the problems we've had regarding the boiler. If we hadn't had to search around to find the landlord, wait for him to find a gas company to check the old installation and then find someone to install a new boiler, we might have done far more, going out and about as we usually do during school breaks. Just hope things will have improved for the next holiday period in the next few weeks, which will be  the Easter break.

We did what we often do when we need a refresher, and that was to drive out of Milton Keynes and find somewhere to visit and possibly get a spot to eat and drink. We had favoured Brackley, which is on road west of Buckingham and a place now by-passed so you miss easily when you drive past, so it seemed an ideal place to visit and wander around as it is supposed to have antique shops and is used occasionally on television shows such as Antiques Road Trip and Bargain Hunt, two television shows we watch and quite enjoy. By the time we reached Buckingham, the weather was rapidly changing, the rain-clouds were gathering and a rain storm was imminent. Beyond Buckingham, we came to a garden centre, which we have visited before and been into the restaurant. This was Buckingham Garden Centre. I know, a not exactly imaginative name, but I suppose it accurately incorporates the name of the town into it's name. We were not disappointed with the restaurant and were glad we went in as the rain began to pour down outside.

Moving on toMonday: the gasfitters arrived to install the new boiler. The dogs became somewhat confused by the appearance of the strangers in the house. Alfie spent most of the day really stressed out, whining and barking. I had hoped to keep both dogs in the lounge, but during the morning, Poppy got out through the front door. How she escaped without being detected I have no idea, but I went out into the estate and couldn't see her anywhere. I had looked in all the usual places she goes when she wants to be on her own, for example, under our bed, in the garden and behind the sofa. But no signs. Fortunately our neighbour, Gary, came go my assistance, and we eventually tracked her down to the park and she was returned safely to our house. Alfie meanwhile had been put on his lead and put in the bedroom, which he didn't like and made an awful noise until I went to stay with him for an hour or two which made him calm down, fortunately.
It took until around 6 o'clock for the workmen to complete the installation of the new boiler and to tidy up and leave by which time Carol had returned to work and she had a bath. Thankfully we now can say the job is complete after a very nerve-wracking week. 

Beautiful Sunny Day!

Carol did some tutoring this morning, and when she came home we were due to go shopping, but, because it was so warm and sunny we decided to drive to Woburn. We are fans of many antiques shows on television, such as Bargain Hunt, Antiques Road trip etc and parked the car and went to one antique shop on the market-square which has featured in Antiques Road Trip, Woburn Antiques Centre (I believe Charlie Ross, who appears regularly on this show has an interest in it, or may even own it.) It was interesting looking around, particularly a fine collection of Moorcroft pottery, which we both love, but at the prices they were asking, well out of our  price range, unfortuntely.

From there we walked along the High Street  and found a really nice coffee shop and went in and had coffee and cake. Very nice. We went back to the car and then drove through Woburn Park, as we like to look at the deer.