Glee

Tuesday 9th March 2010, 12.45pm, Boat from Gili Trewangen to Kuta - Lombok/Bali

Besides people, there's hardly anything from home that I miss. I've discovered that I need very few of the habits and constructs, routines and objects that we put in place around us and call a life. I do not need a wardrobe full of clothes, or my ipod, or red lipstick. I do not need a hairdryer or Cornflakes for breakfast or the swimming pool at my gym. I do not need my bookcase or Sunday mornings in Costa Coffee or the view of Tower Bridge from the Southbank, and I do not need to sing Billie Holiday classics in the shower. I do not need my laptop, or the exercise bike, or Ricky Gervais podcasts, or nights out in Shoreditch, or faux fur coats or my pet hamster. I do not need cheese on toast or walks through Hyde Park or Sylvia Plath anthologies or red wine or patent high heels or Wednesday nights at the cinema. These things helped fill in the gaps of my life, I like them, but I do not need them.

This is why, when Will and I visited a dodgy DVD shop in Kuala Lumpur, I was reluctant to spend money on cheap, knocked-off films, because among the other things that used to be part of my life, I do not miss television, and I definitely do not need it. With Will's insistence however that I would be a fool not to buy into such bargains, I picked up the first series box set of an American television programme that I had never seen, but had gathered from friends' reports was something I might enjoy. Dean, Katie and myself opted for a lazy evening yesterday night. We sat on some cushions outside a beach bar in front of a TV screen, munched our way through a pack of chocolate biscuits, and I put my new DVD on.

Never has an hour of television filled me with such sheer abject rapture, it was enchanting, I felt warm right through. Such talent and originality, quick, polished writing, singing, dancing, perfectly chosen soundtrack, eye candy, reasons to laugh and to cry, characters to care about, a cause to celebrate, joyful portrayals of youth next to sardonic affirmations of female wit, morality and ethics questioned and championed, storylines just beyond believability to offer the right amount of guilty escapism.

I really like this programme. I really, really like it. And now we've been introduced, I may even need it. It's left me feeling Gleeful.