When my husband and I moved nearly three years ago, in order to be able to afford the increased rent of our new home, I had to cut down on some subscriptions like Discovery Vitality – an awards subscription which encouraged you to get fit and eat healthy, so if you ran lots, you logged in your miles using your fit bit or whatever you used, and you got movie vouchers, cappuccino vouchers, air ticket vouchers etc and if you got to the highest level your rewards were good. I also cancelled my cell phone subscription and my premium tv package. So, I have not watched TV for nearly three years. Which I have no problem with. I have Netflix on the one device package and I keep current with the news from You Tube and the internet. I guess I do miss some of the sports on the premium tv package, like tennis, rugby, cricket and cycling, but I can get commentary for example, on rugby, on You Tube.

During the last two years of course there hasn’t been much South African rugby, because of a certain pandemic, so it’s good to see it going again. There’s no more of the “Super Rugby championship” with New Zealand and Australia and now the South African teams are playing in the United Rugby Championship against mostly UK teams and an Italian team I think. Yesterday evening I listened to commentary on the Sharks vs Leinster game in Durban and being a Sharks fan was happy they won. I follow rugby commentary on Rugby Ascendant https://www.youtube.com/channhttps://www.youtube.com/c/ForeverSports/videos – Chris Wyatt is a retired US army colonel who is a rugby fan and covers rugby games from around the the world. For a South African perspective I occasionally watch https://www.youtube.com/c/ForeverSports/videos.

Chris Wyatt also has a channel – https://www.youtube.com/c/ChrisWyattAfrica and he covers world news with a focus on African, particularly Southern African news. He’s definitely worth checking out and I enjoy watching his livestreams when I can, to keep up to date with current affairs.

I also watched “The Engineers who died to keep the Titanic’s lights on, on You Tube, on the Timeline – World History Documentaries channel. This film was about the engineers, firemen and boiler men of the doomed ship. It was interesting and these men were the unsung heroes of that night, doing their best to keep the Titanic afloat for as long as possible, to save as many lives as possible. There was very little of the glamour and romanticism that James Cameron’s Titanic portrayed and certainly shovelling coal was from glamorous. We hear of all the famous characters most of the time, but do we remember the names of those men? Hard working class men, earning little and doing what they had to in life to make a living. Worse maritime disasters have happened since, but there’s something about The Titanic that has kept the story of it alive for so long.