Videoesque

The video loafed in the hall cupboard. It could not be played because the player could not be trusted. Cleaning cassettes were about as effective as trying to scrape Satan's crusty arse clean with only a plastic figurine from a popular cereal packet.

Videos decay. They lose their strength. They fade. Some of the videos in the hall cupboard had only been viewed once then put away indefinitely. More and more productions joined the ranks of the never-to-be-seen-again, sitcoms and revues and horrors and thrillers and weepies and peepies and westerns and pastiches and sci-fi and kung-fu and music and that cheap film called "Deranged" which isn't the one you're thinking of but a strange thing where people wiggle about on teleport devices in the desert. Even that didn't get watched.

It felt bad to record over old programmes, like some kind of violation. Imagining Michael Caine getting a shiver down his spine as I reluctantly overwrite one of his 1980s B-movies which I hadn't even seen, with a Comic Strip movie I would cherish but not return to.

If a tree falls in the middle of the forest and no-one's there, does it make a sound?