I have always been a sucker for daytime soaps.

No all soaps, and not all the time, but still I do have a soft spot for a couple.

While I would never go back to watching it now, Days of Our Lives was my staple all the way through high school. Especially in the later, more stressful years. I would tape Days during the day and watch it when I got home, before settling into the drudgery of homework.

During that period and later I also had a weakness for Santa Barbara and in particular its often goofy sense of humour. Also, Eden�s hair. Alice and I used to be endlessly amused by the stupid hairstyle they gave Marcy Walker by essentially brushing all her hair forward over her shoulders so it looked all lush and cascade-y in the front, but then the back was just one giant part with no hair at all down her back.

But by far my longest soap relationship has been with General Hospital.

I think this is largely because of the vagaries of Australian television scheduling. Australian networks have pretty much consistently aired Days, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful since their inception. Well, not quite since their inception. Since a few years after their inception, actually. So we were (and I presume still are) 3-4 years behind on each show.

GH, on the other hand, has suffered from a far more chequered scheduling history. But one that has worked in my favour. In the mid to late eighties when I was watching Days and the joys and horrors of the Patch and Kayla saga, one network was airing episodes of GH from its first real heyday � the late 1970�s and early 80�s. The Luke and Laura years.

And while laughing at the 70�s fashions, and in particular the proliferation of episodes featuring Richard Simmons leading aerobics sessions around the park, I got pretty quickly hooked on the show. Then it went off the air. Sometime after Laura disappeared � I was always amused by the fact that all that was found of her were her ubiquitous brown knee-high boots, which I hated � and before Holly arrived. Aka the Demi Moore year(s).

Some time later they started airing the show on another network. They had skipped forward a few years to when Robert Scorpio returned from Australia � and no, I don�t think the timing was any coincidence. So they we got a run of a couple of years of Robert, Sean and Anna high-jinks and other fun and games before it went off the air, again, but only for a brief period. Long enough so everyone wouldn�t be totally confused when they skipped forward another couple of years to Luke and Laura�s early nineties return to Port Charles.

Which lead to a lengthy run across two networks of the show�s second real heyday, the early and mid-nineties. Of heart-transplants and child deaths, Sonny-Brenda, Lucy lunacy, the AIDS storyline and all that good stuff that they�ve never been able to live up to since. Of course, in place of Richard Simmons they had Ricky Martin, but at least they�d moved past their brief brush with alien life-forms. (Insert appropriate Ricky Martin joke here.)

I then watched the show for a long and fairly sustained period up until around 1999-2000. When it went off the air again.

But now it�s back, and I have a dilemma. Today GH is starting on one of the cable channels that showed it in the late nineties, and, if the ads are anything to go by, they�re showing pretty much entirely up-to-date 2004 episodes. They�re also showing it three times a day, which I guess means that they�ve had demand for it since it went off the air three or four years ago. But do I start watching again?

It�s a sure thing that if I do get hooked again that I won�t be able to have digital cable at my new apartment and therefore will only have about two months worth of watching before I have to stop again.

On the other hand, I�ve heard that the show aint so great these days, so perhaps I won�t get hooked at all. Which will leave me kind of pleased that I�ve left that tied-to-the-TV part of myself behind, but also disappointed at what has become of my once favourite guilty pleasure.

So I�m not sure whether to start watching again. I have taped today�s episode of course. But that doesn�t mean I�ll watch it.

Unless Betty makes me. Which may well happen because the last time it was on I kind of got Betty hooked as well�

And I have to find out exactly how up to date the episodes are. Only to satisfy my curiosity, of course.