Nothing for the weekend

This weekend, Saturday was just another Monday: the university term has started and, for the first time in about eighteen months, I was rostered to work on a Saturday morning in the library. So my routine yesterday was the same as it will be tomorrow: early alarm, television on, watch the travel news and the headlines, then get up, get dressed and get on a bus.

So I woke on the alarm and turned on the television: from which I learned, straightaway, prominently, as a matter of apparent national importance, that Boy George had been arrested for alleged cocaine offences, in New York. This was, the talking head informed me, "the main news for today, Saturday the eighth of October".

Of course. It would have been quite wrong if the BBC had led on what, even at that early hour, were hundreds of deaths in India and Pakistan. Or a substantial death toll in Central America in the sort of storm that was extensively reported when it hit the US, with rather fewer casualties, several days before. It would be an eccentric set of values which interpreted these events as being of greater moment than the undramatic detention of a man who had a number of hit records about twenty years ago. Granted, the disasters and the deaths were overseas, but domestic news must always come first: hence the prioritising of the arrest, in New York, of a resident of that city.

It worked for me, anyway, at least if the intention was to get me swiftly out of bed while swearing at the television. Normally, I lie in bed for the headlines, the main stories and as much Teletext as I can flick through before I absolutely have to get up. On Saturday, I was on the bus at roughly the same time I'm normally reaching for the toothbrush.

This morning, on Sunday AM, the papers were being reviewed by Toyah Wilcox.