Tune In, Drop Out

It's official, I'm addicted to Treatment and when it finishes I'll need treatment to get over it. I speak of course about the brilliant new TV series on Sky Arts 1, In Treatment, with the delicious Gabriel Byrne dolling out a daily helping of therapy finishing up on Fridays with himself on the couch, while the divine Dianne Wiest, who incidentally seems to have taken the road less travelled where nips and tucks are concerned and looks all the better for it, nods, smiles and raises the odd eyebrow with ease, in a face devoid of botox, as she tries to help Paul deal with the unwanted love of a patient. There was certainly a bit of erotic transference going on, on my sofa, have you seen Gabriel Byrne recently? He just gets better with age. Which is great, who needs to go out when you can snuggle up on the couch with Byrne as your virtual boyfriend? Because despite the yoga and the green tea and the goji berries, with age comes exhaustion. It seems like only yesturday that the daylight hours where just a prelude to going out time, but not anymore, it takes a real effort and to be quite honest going out on a cold, wet night holds little allure especially when the weekends are dominated by the 24-hour party people hell-bent on hell-raising. It's as if there's a forty-something curfew round my way, the old folk over 39 are rounded up and herded off the streets to make way for the fun. 

However, last week, despite a plethora of top telly, I made a lot of effort and went out quite a bit on the more age-appropriate nights. So, on forty-something friendly Tuesday, I went to the book launch of a friend of a friend I didn't know. An ideal opportunity, I thought, to down a couple of free glasses of wine and mix and mingle with total strangers, you never know who you might meet. Unfortunately, I met a woman I hadn't seen for years, and with good reason. She is not what you'd call 'a girl's girl', talking to her is not conversation, it's the divulging of information, she fixes you with her beady blue eyes and extracts facts that may be taken down and used against you at a later date. I didn't want to talk to her so pretended I hadn't seen her but it was too late. She came through the crowd like an Exocet, despite being 10 years older than me age cannot whither her, whippet thin she moved at speed. With nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide, there was nothing for it but to throw back my head and whoop in surprise, fling my arms around her and exclaim 'wow!' Where upon she took off her coat and announced she'd be staying longer in order to interrogate me about my life and loves and the state of everyone else we had in common. And she wouldn't let me go which meant I had to stop making eyes at a wine stained dandy I'd quite fancied, a sort of cross between Hugh Grant and Boris Johnson called Willy, which, with hindsight, probably wasn't a very good idea. So perhaps I should be grateful that I didn't succumb to a third glass of wine where upon I would undoubtedly become a social embarrassment.

 

But, despite my abundance of nightlife, I missed none of my favourite TV shows because of the joy of Sky Plus, where with the aid of one button even I can ensure entire series are gaily recorded without fear. However, with new technology comes new problems, and I've now developed Sky Plus anxiety, an excessive amount of pre-recoreded programs I'm unlikely to ever get through, causing panic and stress and resulting in the need for therapy.  Thankfully I'm already in Treatment with Gabriel Byrne. 

Top tip: Body brushing, it takes a few minutes a day and the results are amazing, banish bing-wings forever!!