rare televisual immersion

The TV and I have fewer and fewer encounters nowadays. This is all down to circumstances, no doubt. Tonight, at Alice's house, we sit down to watch Merrick in Prime Suspect. I missed Alice being funny the other day. Merrick mumbles beautifully. He looks younger than the last time I saw him. He's a plausible copper, in the shiny new police station. The action cuts to a hospital. The nurse comes into shot. It's Glenda. It looks like she's not coming back, then towards the end she touchingly hands over the dead man's effects to his daughter. In the adverts, Alice says that's what's his name from Blakes Junction 7. The last time I saw him he was wearing a chef's outfit. The pub quiz player turns up as he's bound to do. Alice says she got the schoolteacher's name wrong once, called him Ricky. For years the TV is like a distant land, where things happen in a parallel universe. Then you grow up and it's like going to the pub.