A plague on this particular house meant an opportunity to become reacquainted with the very modern nourishment of television

HAVE BEEN struck down for some days now by some sort of biblical plague. Yes. Thanks for asking, by the way. No, the grapes you sent never arrived. And no, it was not a wink, wink sickie. Yes, you may turn away quickly to hide your guilt. Don’t forget to contribute to the charity telethon.

Those of you with genuine compassion in your hearts will know that it is especially stressful to suffer such grievous debilitation in an economic climate where the earning of mileage is critical to survival.

For days now the familiar journey from Bed to Sofa has become an epic, but made for the love of travel and the joy of arrival. It forces one to re-evaluate travel and lifestyle choices.

It is, of course, possible these days to travel direct from Bed to Sofa, but anybody who has had exposure to the plague may find it wiser to look into the possibilities of a layover at Bathroom, before proceeding. A layover is advisable, at least on the outward journey. Nobody wants to take a risky puddlejumper home after a break.

Whatever one’s route (Spare Room is worth seeing, too, but not worth a detour), when one finally reaches Sofa one finds a welcoming, if worn, environment with a familiar, been there, done that feel to it. Sofa is a bit dishevelled at the northern end, especially the Magazine Area, but the place has its charms for the weary traveller looking to do little more than sit back and relapse.

Local lore, for instance, has it that there is a fortune in loose change lying just beneath the surface. But for those who don’t want to chance their arm delving and exploring, a visit to Sofa is the perfect opportunity for some cultural immersion in the world of “television”.

Being out and about every weekend keeping food on the table and keeping the table from the repo man is a business which deprives the busy soul of the very modern nourishment of television. To lose touch with television, the young ones say, is to lose touch with life, and indeed it was a pleasure these past few days to spend time in the intellectual playground provided by the producers of such challenging programming as Sixteen and Pregnant or BridalPlasty (an investigation of post-liberation feminism wherein 12 women compete to win a dream wedding and plastic surgery procedures).

Enough digression though. It is for its sport that one visits the Sofa Television Festival on any given weekend. This past weekend brought a packed schedule.

On Friday we watched uber jock Ryan Tubridy josh and banter his way through a 17-hour interview with three of the country’s leading sportsmen, Rory McIlroy, Rob Kearney and Eoin Cadogan. Ryan knows his sport like very few other people do, but he keeps his interview style entertainingly superficial in the “nothing you didn’t know already style”. As top-level players often like to let their hair do the talking, this seemed a special relief to Rory McIlroy.

On Saturday, aware of the busy schedule ahead, we lunched late in the colourful and, frankly, a little too rough-and-ready Kitchen District before heading back to Sofa Central for a rest. Awoke somewhat confused by the time zones and rang a friend while exploring teletext for news of Leeds United and Sheffield United.

Received a not entirely pleasant but certainly bracing spa treatment from said friend for not being watching “the rugby”, even though I was spending the weekend in “rugby country”. Having once spent a dry weekend in Napa Valley, I took the hint.

The rugby was in the form of an entertaining pageant full of metaphor, imagery and analogy. A small leprechaun-type man produced a pin as long and as pointy as The Spire which stands not more than five miles from Sofa Central. With this pin he popped the great big colourful balloon of the jolly giant from the neighbouring land. This deed did not make the leprechaun rich or even provide him with his own balloon. The simple joy of seeing a big balloon be pierced and then vanishing made the leprechaun’s confederates very happy. It was hard not to be taken up with their simple joy.

It was perhaps overdoing it to turn to one of the Sky channels and find middle-aged men looking at football matches and shouting at each other in loud voices instead of just showing us the football matches. This refined form of sports pornography is reportedly increasing popular and could, it is said, presage a time when all sports events are purely imaginary. Games will just be shouted out by middle-aged men.

We “came down” by traditional means, drugging ourselves and consuming some red wine from the famous Spar region. Sufficiently calmed, we kept the mood downbeat and watched some “league” football between two teams (Down and Monaghan) from an area well to the north of Sofa.

And then it was time for the main event of the evening. We were to be part of “the fancy” watching the fistic exhibition between one William Big Bang Casey, who has declined to defect from war-torn Limerick, and Guillermo Rigondeaux, who has defected from lovely Cuba. Strange world.

Opting for more red wine proved the wrong option here. Cruising the Kitchen District with a bottle between one’s knees and a resistant cork screw in the neck of the bottle cost vital seconds, and when we emerged into the gloaming of Sofa Central the exhibition of pugilism had ended with the rude piecing of the balloon so heroically inflated by Big Bang. With the genius that is strictly local, the television station was able to turn a sports action show into a talk show within an instant.

Guillermo, seen in retrospect, appeared to be something of an artist, unlike his countryman Odlanier Solis who, having sampled a little of Vitali Klitschko’s punching on Saturday night in Cologne, uttered an “oh no de cologne” and hit the canvas as if riddled by bullets. The poet David Haye described the fallen Cuban “as a fat bum”, and little was done to offer an argument on behalf of his fat-bumness.

Yesterday, our final day in Sofa Central, was one of worship. Many, many times have we watched Mr Diarmuid Connolly play hurling or football and wondered if he would ever have a day when everything he tried would come off and force us to laugh more then weep. Yesterday he left us with happy memories of our lost weekend. Not everything came off, but so much did that we were left with the impression of a young man sailing around an important corner in his career.

We sat and listened to the traffic from the south and north and indeed the east. We smiled happily. Ironically no mileage, but Sofa Central has its charms. By the end of our visit we did indeed feel, as more hardened visitors had promised, like a “potato” of Sofa.

The rain was coming down slightly but we were happy. Of maybe it was just the medication and the red wine from Spar. Or EuroSpar, as it has been known since the referendum among the people of The Shops.