So, I'm stuck in a hotel in Swindon. Not a place I want to explore, I tried that once and got fleas. I don't do 1960s urban blight, I don't want to battle my way through the chavs and the winos to spend an evening in the sort of bar Winston Smith would have felt at home in.
Nor do I want to drink in the hotel bar and pay £3.50 a pint for fizzy beer (no, the company doesn't pay beerage), and there's a coach party of German pensioners in, cluttering up the lifts and making the restaurant untidy with their open-necked pastel shirts and their beige slacks.
So, what's on the box? Check out the TV listing sites. Cool, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly is on. Great movie. I like Clint, I like Sergio Leoni's westerns, I love Ennio Morricone's score. I could very happily spend the evening watching that again.
They haven't even got Channel 5! FFS!! I'd got my heart set on some spaghetti Western. And there's no air conditioning and the fan in my room shifts about as much air as a sneeze from an asthmatic hamster.
Think maybe I'll go down to the bar and mention the war.