Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on – let me make sure you’ve got the inflection here: Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I narrate the entire bleeding film to her. ‘Who’s she?’, ‘Why did he get shot?’, ‘I thought that one was on their side?’, ‘Is that a bomb’ – ‘JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF GOD, JUST WATCH IT!’ The hellish mirror-image of this is when she furnishes me, deaf to my pleading, with her commentary. Chair-clawing suspense being assaulted mercilessly from behind by such interjections as, ‘Hey! Look! They’re the cushions we’ve got.’, ‘Isn’t she the one who does that tampon advert?’ and, on one famous occasion, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this – he gets killed at the end.’
Hoezo herkenbaar…