What’s the point?

The older I get the less tolerant I grow towards any form of entertainment — a play, a film, a TV programme, a book, whatever — that doesn’t deliver sufficient value. Tempus fugit, mors venit, and the last thing I want to be doing in my declining years is wasting precious leisure time on anything that doesn’t amuse me, make me happier, teach me a useful new fact about the second world war or otherwise enrich my life.

This is why, for example, I have resolved never to read another contemporary literary novel. You don’t learn anything; the plots are never quite racy or involving enough to distract you from the cares of daily life; and, most annoyingly, they’re written in an attention-seeking style which you’re supposed to linger on and cherish, like poetry, which is another thing I’m not going to bother with from now on (not that I ever did that much).