Streamers dream

I wrote an entry about changing news consumption habits about a month ago. Today, I found myself with another habit that is totally different from when I was growing up.

The team social I missed last night seems to have made a few people worse for wear. And, although I was out until the pubs closed and home after midnight, I felt fine all day. Only as Friday came to a close did I start feeling lethargic. PY is on The Island trying to get a carpenter to look at the hall cupboard that needs removing to allow the new electricity meter to be installed. By the end of the day, he was annoyed as, at 5pm, the carpenter promised he was on his way only to fail to appear.

So, I was a bit tired and had an evening to myself. Recently, I’ve been rewatching episodes of The Blacklist. I am now at the point, towards the end of series 2, where I stopped watching when it was initially on Sky. All the episodes will be new to me from now on, but I am glad I rewatched them as I’d forgotten the backstory. This evening I thought I’d settle in and watch a couple of episodes before I made dinner. Instead, I binged on eight episodes back-to-back, something I doubt I would ever have been able to do before streaming. Which channel would ever have shown a day’s worth non-stop?

What’s even more fantastic is that I watched the first episode tonight while still sitting at my desk around 5pm, streamed to the computer in front of me. It was only when I realised it would be more comfortable, and I could snack, that I moved to the sofa and watched the next one on a bigger screen. And then another one. Around 9pm, I took a break and walked to the Co-op in search of dinner. I ended up with a stereotypical ‘TV dinner’, a microwave sweet and sour dish I ate back on the sofa.

Eventually, I decided I should go to bed. But even there, I watched ‘just one more’ episode on a tablet.

I don’t often binge-watch television in a single night like this. We are more likely to watch a couple of episodes a day to get through a new series we are interested in. And, the Blacklist season I have been watching contains twenty-two episodes – so I am not watching them in one sitting – but I have definitely embraced the new way of watching.