Caught in the video trap

VENI SED Video Vicit means or is meant to mean that I came to heel but video conquered. My home has been invaded by video tapes. I survived the twotelevision family era where to preserve some civilised behaviour we could split and reunite at news time or little-white-dot time without feelins of deprivation or anger.
As the family grew (and thanks to a second-hand bargain from a friend whos junior family had left him for matrimony) we even had a three-television era. Now the video machine has become the wheel, the Caxton, the Alexander Graham Bell of our household. Things will never be the same. Taping favourite if appalling shows and re-running them forever is a punishment I can survive — even if Top Of The Pops or Kenny Everett going round and round and round is something the Chinese never thought of. Hired tapes of nasty films picked up by teenagers and younger in village stores are something different. They fill me With dread.
I don't want censorship. I don't want to be a video vigilante — I want to be a happy carefree liberal. But as sure as God made little snowflakes, if the video salesman don't cool it somebody's going to shout "Fire!"
WE ALL KNOW — maybe we all are — the kind of person who can't resist verbally shooting first and assessing damages afterwards. It's difficult to sacrifice a surefire strike on target and the guffaw or the giggle that rewards it, on the off-chance that the victim will have no sense of those human beings perma nently attuned to hurt.
Best advice against the world-bully is still grandmother's "don't pay any attention". Best and kindliest defence of the bully — bad tongue, good heart.