There is a special time of night reserved for me when everyone else has gone to bed. I'm a night-owl you see, often wide awake in the hours either side of midnight. Even if I should go to bed at a reasonable time I can't get to sleep without inevitably spending hours reading. But what I really want is a visual cheese fix!
I love movies and can see the good stuff at any-time as thankfully my family feel the same. But cheesy cinema is currently something only I enjoy and so is saved for private consumption. I refer mainly to those films once classed as being 'straight-to-video' but also 'cult' stuff. In my student days I would stay up till three or four in the morning watching such films, selected from a whole trunk full of videos, both shop-bought and recorded from TV, and the cheesier the better. So possibly a time-travel-triple of 'Terminator', 'Timescape' and 'Timerider'. Or following on from there, other Fred Ward classics such as 'Tremors' or 'REMO: Unarmed and Dangerous'. Even when living with MW(TG) I liked a little late night cheese and at this time the BBC would often finish their schedule by showing some prime cheddar, with the likes of 'Trancers', 'Deep Red' or 'Dark City'.
Sadly the onset of serious work brought these late night sessions to an end. My trouble was I wouldn't know when to stop! If left in front of a TV I would almost always find something to watch and before I knew it it was early morning with a full day of honest toil just waiting to happen. To make matters worst, when we finally moved over to cable from terrestrial TV about eight years ago it was like entering cheese-heaven!. Suddenly I had a veritable cheese-board of delicacies at my fingertips every night and not just movies. I was watching old TV programmes and classic cartoons into the wee small hours. I even fell into the trap of watching poker on TV (Not playing, mind - watching! A gambling voyeur!)
At about the same time I also gained a perfect excuse for these late night viewings with the arrival of my daughter. She, like myself, was never a big one for sleeping as a baby and even now would rather be up late than up early. When we took her to The Greenman Festival aged five she stayed up till gone midnight to scream and dance to the great Jarvis Cocker! ("Angela! Angela!") As a baby this was a killer for MW because awake all night also meant FEED all night! I would therefore do the 'gallant' thing and take the babe away from the milk bar. We would slip downstairs for a few hours and I'd watch TV, and more often than not my daughter would watch with me.
Obviously I stayed away from anything harmful to such a young and impressionable mind. However, the music channels proved a popular compromise and our late night sessions were filled with a real mix-bag. Her favourites at the time included OutKast's 'Hey Ya!' (no doubt for the fast pace and bright colours) and Kelis' 'Milkshake' (although this may have been a subliminal desire to get back upstairs for a feed!). But her favourite was The Darkness and 'I Believe In A Thing Called Love' - which if watched with a small child in mind, could quite easily be an episode of The Wiggles or Teletubbies.
But all good things come to an end and my daughter finally started sleeping through. I sensibly curtailed my late night viewing once more and reverted to marathon book reading again. But in the last year a new channel-to-cheese has presented itself to me with the arrival of the iPod and iPhone. Now, with some downloading or streaming, I can go to bed at a sensible hour, settle down and catch up on films both classic and cheesy, TV programmes old and new. When eyelids finally start to droop I unplug, roll over and embrace the darkness. Late night cheese may give nightmares to some but for me it's a pathway to peace...
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This Blog entry is dedicated to all the Facebook friends and family recently blessed with little joy bundles. In particular Mr and Mrs G and their new son RHG. May your evenings be full of music and magic!
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