大象传媒

Sunday nights and there is sex on the telly, stacks of it: heterosexual, lesbian, elderley, adulterous, in the woods in the kitchen in the office. My mother is watching in her bedroom, I am watching down in the living room. We shout the occasional horrified comment to one another from a distance. "Good Heavens!", "Here they go again!", "Whatever next?"

This is the only way I can cope with it. For some reason I don't like to watch things like that at all, especially when there is someone else present. If my mother's in the room I jump up in a prim way and go and make the tea. If my 19 year old daughter is present I pretend she is only ten, I'm Joyce Grenfell, and suggest she shut her eyes or go to bed early. If my Boyfriend is there I fiddle with my hair or face, or run away and put the kettle on. Or fetch the ice cream or let the dog out, anything so as not to watch the wretched stuff.

My mother, however, isn't bothered; she remains glued to the screen, half fascinated, half appalled. "It's orgasms again," she shouts from her bedroom in a relaxed way. "Where's my tea and toast?" She has become accustomed to modern television and can stomach it even over breakfast, even though she was born shortly after the reign of Queen Victoria.

I think my attitude used to be called uptight in the seventies. I prefer to call it sensitive. My mother and daughter are obviously more robust. My father was even more robust. One day, when I was about 16, and at my absolute most sensitive, I watched a wildlife programme with my father. Two heavenly butterflies appeared. They fluttered about the screen against an azure sky, and then they met in the middle.

"At it again", roared my father, very coarsely I felt. Naturally I left the room, my evening ruined. Perhaps I never recovered.

As for me I wait for Sunday nights, hoping for an hour of lovely costume drama before bedtime. For some reason I still feel that nothing rude should happen on a Sunday night. And costume drama is my favourite. It has love, romance and passion, but usually repressed, smouldering, seething and covered in clothes. Tom Jones and Moll Flanders were a little risky, but Jane Austen is perfect. I could easily sit and watch with my mother and daughter, but I can't because it bores them to death. On goes the costume drama and off go my mother and daughter to their own televisions. We are condemned to watch telly alone. Weekends can be a lonely time.