GOING MONK



Sometimes we do things as families that only have significant meaning to the people housed within our own four walls. I am sure this is a default for most families. A great example of this is the ‘family feast’ a Saturday night tea-time extravaganza of small bite-sized canapés designed specifically for TV consumption on the sofa. An added bonus of the ‘Family Feast’ is that all food is small – and as we all know small means not fattening right? Regardless of quantity a blini with crème fraîche and salmon is still only a blini with crème fraîche and salmon no matter how many can be squeezed onto tray. Home-made pizza (cut up really small), egg balls (mini scotch eggs to the rest of the world), Ina Menzels (little herby cheesy cracker bites of heaven) and a Ginger Special (generally a drink concocted of whatever non-alcoholic liquid Ginger can find in the cupboard, not including cleaning fluids). All of these things are meaningless to the outside world – but to us they are meaningless happiness filled nonsense that brings worth to a Saturday night. The ability for Ginger and Blondie’s friends to just dive in and pick the various names for food never ceases to amaze.

So - your first set of teeth are that important are they? I mean
you yank them out and shove under your pillow. They are disposable.

Like so many other families we have little quirks around music. There are songs that, when drifting across the airwaves, summon us all to the room of origin for a tribal knees up. We all dance a complicated but polished routine that would have Balanchine weeping in his grave with the knowledge that his choreographic gifts to the world could never be as great as ours. If you can’t enjoy dancing what do have? And by enjoying dancing I mean doing it, watching it, hearing it and feeling it. I have lost count the number of times a bewildered passer-by has idly gazed into our front room only to be confronted by two adults and two children doing the robot to Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger or a remarkably  in-sync running man pas de quatre to LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem. We are tempted to run out onto the street dancing to Twist and Shout in the hope that we can pull the entire road into a Chicago-style street party – and just sometimes, when filling the car with petrol, we have to check ourselves if Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go pops up on the radio. We are currently working on a significant routine for Olly Murs’s Army of Two that requires a lot of marching and people joining in mid-march – it is early stages.

 

Everyone's front room is decorated this was isn't it?

Film is the other great glue in Casa Us. Particularly Zoolander and Ferris Bueller. Ginger, Blondie and I have a tendency to recreate scenes from Zoolander at the drop of a hat; Mrs M presides over the Ferris scenes, which, if I am honest, have greater depth than my Zoolander scenes. All this said and done you can sometimes forget what is funny to your immediate nest is sometimes at best baffling and at worst terrifying to visiting children from external groups. All families have a shorthand, ours is based mainly on cultural reference and sarcasm, others, to our astonishment, are not quite so flippant.

 

Example one. EAT YOUR FOOD OR YOU WILL DIE. A light hearted off the cuff response that we have thrown at Ginger and Blondie for as long as we can remember. They have always taken and continue to take the advice on eating to sustain life with the wry cheeky ebullience that it deserves. Perhaps saying this to their cousin who was being a bit of a picky eater wasn’t the best move. The same earnest and lovely little child that we once kept up all night on holiday when we told her trolls live under the bridge that goes over the swimming pool at night (by way of discarded line to our two to stop them running round the pool at night. Something I might add they understood to be balderdash and was a peremptory strike at the ever present question ‘Why?’) Sadly, Ginger and Blondie knowing this and acting upon it didn’t translate to our niece. The crazy thing at the time was she didn’t even know what a troll was. I can assure you that she does now and she doesn’t fear them (as much) as she did on that night.

 

Sure he looks cute. But that dandelion stem is what a Troll
uses to imbibe crystal meth. Hence no teeth and purple hair.
They don't mention that in the Three Billy Goats Gruff do they?!

Example two: IT’S A WALK OFF. Ginger and Blondie had a friend round. David Bowie’s (only ever pronounced Dayviid Boawwee in our house) Let’s Dance! came on the wireless. Ginger immediately declared ‘It’s a Walk Off!’ Blondie and I disappeared and then reappeared. Ginger explained the rules:

'Now this'll be a straight walk-off, old school rules. First model walks, second model duplicates, then elaborates. OK, let's go to work.'

And we commence. First Blondie, for she plays the Derek of the film title and then me for I am the Hansel, not of the film title. We proceed, no ambiturning, faux fringe cutting, delicately drunk water until I eventually go Monk. On this occasion I had managed to get the spare pants, Blondie was forced to give herself a wedgie. Then it struck me – their little friend who had up till that moment being playing happily round our house all afternoon was staring just a little horrified at us. Hmm. Wonder how that little episode got retold back their house….

These are important moments in life I think. After all, every child should follow Ferris’s credo, ‘Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’  And they should definitely be able to sing at least one verse of Wayne Newton's Danke Schoen…….

 

FOOTBALL TALK

Footballers. Don’t you just love ‘em? I have very little opinions on football in general, there have been professional footballers or nearly pro footballers in my family (Spurs and Rangers by all accounts) and likewise in my wife’s family (Spurs being the cross-over here). Anyway, this is a short retelling of a chance meeting that still tickles me today. Mrs M and I were in a swanky (for the real meaning of the word just remove the S) bar in the East side of London. This was several years ago – you know the time when there were actually bars so hip that people were prepared to queue to get in or you had to do a complicated act of subterfuge pretending to be the PA to someone relatively famous booking a table to chaperone them for an interview only for them not to turn up but the fact that the interviewer seemed to be a really close friend who also brought someone with them who you knew was never rumbled. Aah the Met Bar. What foolish youth we were filling our empty martini glasses with a cocktail of hubris and ennui. 20 years later we slip on the free frames of hindsight and George Bernard Shaw is proven prophetic once again.

So. Mrs M and I are in a bar area, with some other friends and a footballer of some note wanders in with his entourage. The cliché collection of James 20 bellies and the like. I can’t judge them – friends are friends, none of them were offensive in any way, perhaps a bit loud, but I suspect we were as well. I won’t name the footballer, but he played for Spurs and England (I think he was recovering from injury – which I am told has been his standard position for most of his career). We ended up, in the general bar melee that is the ebb and flow of people waving £20 pound notes folded lengthways over their middle fingers, occupying the same space at the end of the bar like social driftwood nudging each other in the artificially formed lentic of our evening.

 

I had one of these. Yeah I know, me with a football is like Liberace with an attack dog

We decided to chat to the footballer. Age is important here. The footballer is one year older than us, we were about 27 at the time. Not wishing to do a disservice to footballers we imagined that if we were going to talk we needed to talk football. This goes for most professions, it is not a slur on the individual, if you are introduced to a doctor your opening gambit is probably going to be something medically related (although not a demand for an impromptu health check – that is frowned upon) in fact here are a few opening conversation scuds that you could employ if you ever find yourself in a mano-a-mano situation with a ‘professional’ stranger:

Jockey: What about those horses eh?
Butcher: What about those horses eh? (cheap but topical joke about a month ago)
Doctors: What about those hospitals eh?
Teachers: What about those politicians eh?
Musicians: What about those recording rights eh? (be very careful at the outset of this conversation that you establish whether this conversation is part of a performance or not and ensure that you don’t go over three hours as this will cost you dearly)
Actors: What about you eh?

I know, incredibly useful wasn’t it? So, between us Mrs M and I can probably carry off a 10 minute conversation about football before we look like complete idiots. That is 10 whole minutes of football knowledge based on our own families’ successes in the arena. This is roughly how it went – hang on before I start, he was on crutches so the fact he wasn’t playing was visually obvious, not something we had prior intelligence on:

Mrs M: Hello, you are Footy McFootball aren’t you? (obviously this wasn't his name)
FMcF: Hi yes I am. (very pleasant response – something he was throughout the short conversation)
Me: Hello, nasty to be on crutches – have you done something bad?
FMcF: Yeah not nice, my Achilles.
Mrs M: Does it hurt?
FMcF: Not now, just have to keep my wait (sic) off it.
Me: How long are you going to be off for?

Look – I know this isn’t the most exciting conversation. Secretly Footy McFootball was probably enjoying talking to some people who weren’t giving him a Saint and Greavsie (I know this football equivalent to Morcambe and Wise purely through the fact that I had to watch it at my best friend’s house whilst waiting for him and his brother to finish lunch before we could go out on our bikes) style grilling.

FMcF: Not sure.
Me: My granddad was about to sign for Spurs at the start of WWII. And my great Uncle played for Rangers, I think. (Not only have I shown scant knowledge of my family and who they actually played for thus exposing my true apathy to the sport but I have also shot all my meagre canons in one salvo thus leaving me empty of conversation beyond this point).
FMcF: Oh right.
Me: Mmmm. Yeah. (awkward hiatus in conversation)
Mrs M: My Dad had a try out for Spurs.
FMcF: Did he?
Mrs M: Yeah, he was quite good I think. My brother has just finished playing in America. They won the college cup.
FMcF: Who does he play for?
Mrs M: I’m not sure what they were called (Mrs M fast approaching the conversational roadblock I was left at a few moments ago).
FMcF: Oh.
Mrs M: Is it a good life being a footballer? (nice work there Mrs M)
FMcF: I can’t complain. Do you want me to sign something for your Dad?
Mrs M: (scrabbling in bag trying not to look impolite because quite frankly we are not 10 anymore and collecting autographs has long since left our weekly ‘to do’ list) OK, how about this? (produces a scrap of paper)
FMcF: What is your Dad’s name?
Mrs M: (insert name of Mrs M’ father here)
FMcF: There you go. Have to get back to the guys now, nice talking to you.
Mrs M: You too, thanks. I’m sure my Dad will be thrilled with this (possible white lie)
Me: (thin echo) Nice meeting you…..

So we finished our drinks. We said goodbye to our friends and headed back to the station to go home. Sat on the train Mrs M pulls out the autograph and written on the paper is:

 

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR SPURS TRIAL MRS M’S DAD

FOOTIE McFOOTBALL

XX

That’s right. Mrs M’s 50 year old father, referred to as Dad several times by her and Footie McFootball was apparently trying out for Spurs. Bless him though. He was lovely, professional and his friends didn’t let him down so I am not criticising. Besides he wasn’t employed as a footballer for his analytical conversation skills.

 

OVER EXPLAINED - WAY OVER EXPLAINED

I am guilty of over explaining things to my children. Where a simple answer can be given to a simple question I fail on an epic scale. Our youngest once asked me, ‘What is real?’ How easy it should have been to adopt my wife’s superior ability to look at the age of the child assess the depth of answer required and simply reply, ‘the stuff around you darling the things you can touch see, hear and smell are all real.’  Any 6 year old child would have been placated by this informative yet succinct explanation.

All books used to descibe what a fish was.

But 10 minutes prior to my wife explaining the basics of reality in terms that could be comprehended by one so young – I had embarked on a road of such explanatory excess that in comparative terms both the Old Testament and New Testament would have shared brevity with a haiku. This is how it went:

Blondie: What is real?Me: That is a good question. Do you mean what is real as in what is alive? Or what exists? Or what is real to you? Or real as in true?B: Just what is real?M: There are lots of different ways we can look at this. If you think real as true, then real is me saying that you have blonde hair.B: I know I have blonde hair.M: or what is real to you – this could mean that you are taught something that will help you at school at the moment like the Prime Minister is a good person who is in charge of the country which is true to a certain extent, but when you get older you will learn that it isn’t just him in charge and that maybe some of his ideas on running a country might not be quite as good as you are told now. So you have been taught something that is real and you will believe it is real but maybe it isn’t as real as you think it is because there are levels of real.B: So what is real?

BAM! Right there I manage to tell a 6 year old she is being taught a pack of lies at school and the Prime Minister /or the person in charge of the country she lives in is not a good person. I am not even sure how this actually relates to the question of what is real….. I have already talked myself into a cul-de-sac.

M: So let’s look at this another way. Look at the street around us. Everything around us is real.

There – recovered – gone for the simple answer. Which would have worked, had I not cast doubt on her education moments before.

B: How do I know it is real?

If only I had a time machine – scrolled forward and plucked my wife’s answer from her lips and rebooted the conversation I could have avoided what came next. But why stick to the tangible when I can call upon Plato’s Parable of the Cave to really screw up my daughter’s grasp of the world around her, after all I have her doubting her teachers so why not go the whole hog and drive a very large splinter of doubt into her own conscious recognition of the world.

M: Well basically you don’t know what is real or not. Nobody does. There was a man from Ancient Greece…B: I am not doing Greece as a topic… I am doing the Tudors.M: I know you are (shame Plato wasn’t a Tudor, this might have gone a bit easier). But this guy was from Ancient Greece. He was called Pluto. He was a philosopher. Do you know what a philosopher is?B: Its in Harry Potter 1.M: A philosopher is a person who is really clever who thinks up reasons for why things are like they are.B: OK. Does he make stuff up?M: Umm… sort of – but it is generally to help us understand things.B: so it isn’t real?M: Well this person, Plato, was really good at helping us see things. He said imagine if you were in a cave, all your life…

I am pretty sure this is what Blondie thinks Plato looks like

I need to say – I paraphrase heavily from this point – basically missing a lot of the nuance of the parable. My inner voice is telling me to shut up – begging me to cease in this pointless part recollected theoretical rant on the perception of reality. Blondie has long since lost interest in the answer to her question – we are now filling time as we wait for Ginger and Mrs M to get back from the other end of the High Street.. But stupidly I plough on determined (probably through my own vanity) to deliver a wise sermon to my youngest child.

M: …..and all you could see were shadows on the cave wall in front of you. And voices talking about stuff so that you think they are telling you what the shadows are. Then those shadows would be the real things to you – and you would think those things were what you heard…

I am failing badly here. I have lost my way and even my point and I am now relying on a 6 year old to pick apart my pathetic attempt at philosophical teaching to find the answer she yearns for.

M: ……But if you were suddenly set free and you saw what was making the shadows (I am making stuff up now) then you would see what was actually real and you would learn that what was once real to you was real but you have now learnt a new more real real.

I think I need to repeat what I have just said. This is my actual answer to a 6 year old’s question – What is real? Just let that sit for a while - soak it up.

IF YOU WERE SUDDENLY SET FREE AND YOU SAW WHAT WAS MAKING THE SHADOWS THEN YOU WOULD SEE WHAT WAS ACTUALLY REAL AND YOU WOULD LEARN THAT WHAT WAS ONCE REAL TO YOU WAS REAL BUT YOU HAVE NOW LEARNT A NEW MORE REAL REAL.

The teaching profession must really be kicking itself that it was unable to persuade me to join their ranks.

Blondie, to her credit, took this on-board. Rolled it around her head for a short while. Then came back with:

B: so shadows aren’t real?M: There are real. B: So what is real then?M: Oh look, here’s Mummy…..

This morning the girls were dressing in 80s clothes for school, presumably it was decided that the 80s was our funniest decade and thus most suitable for Comic Relief. Anyhow, Ginger was wearing an old t-shirt of mine that sports the Atari logo; she asked why it was 80s. I resisted the strong temptation to take her on a journey that started with Binatone console, visited the ZX Spectrum, bounced on a Commodore 64 and ended with BBC Lynx all by way of explaining why we went to the arcade to play ‘video games’. I just said, ‘it was a bit like a Wii we I was a kid.’

I am learning. My kids are probably learning even more as a result.

MUTTON MAN

Is there a term that can be applied to males that sums up the desperation and lack of sartorial self-awareness as acutely as ‘mutton’ does for females? If so, I may need to apply it to myself. Whilst out strolling with Mrs M after dropping Ginger and Blondie in their Saturday morning future career training course (drama) – I say future career training course – it is in actual fact us trying to develop a late pension for ourselves as Ginger has all the love of theatre without the desire to actually perform so her life is mapped to jump from school to St Martin’s to become a designer, her ability to team colour schemes occupies the fine spectrum of maverick to genius and even her most simple doodles carry all the personality and nuance of curious Picasso and Caravaggio hybrid. As for Blondie, she is currently cast in two different shows as well as a concert and is now displaying the acting talent that most RADA graduates would weep at (I know, drama students are supposed to cry but work with me here), with all the subtlety and depth of an actor four times her age she can make you believe you are sharing a room with Will Ferrell as Mugatu. We see Sylvia Young looming large. The fact that there is a sibling discount at the drama group is obviously neither here nor there and that it gets them out of our faces for just a short while is purely coincidental. *

There is no end to our pride when our children perform sections
of Zoolander to strangers. Really.

I may have taken a different tangent to the one I began. Mrs M and I were strolling with purpose towards our local yet over-familiar coffee shop, which is lovely, don’t get me wrong.  The coffee is excellent, the cakes are superb and the staff worthy of all the hyperbole available to them, it is just that I don’t necessarily feel the need to share my name with them in order to have it used as a sentence filler in conversation. It feels like I am being verbally bludgeoned into submission with my own name, all I want is to sit down, eat their supremely moist carrot cake, sip the rich creamy flat white with the pretty leaf pattern in the top and chat with Mrs M about all the stuff we need to do in our house but are very unlikely to get round to doing. Instead we are subjected to a conversation, harmless in itself, where we hear our names so often that we are frankly embarrassed that our parents chose to label us such and I end up shuffling from foot to foot staring at anything but the server like teenager struggling to be polite at a funeral.

I attempted this design once at home. It ended up
looking like a merkin.

So we were strolling, with purpose, when we were distracted by the one sign that, in these straightened times, can stop a parent that is so used to channelling any spare cash into the lives of their offspring (our choice, I am not complaining) CLOSING DOWN SALE! Like, clothes that are normally expensive, ermm, quite cheap. We literally galloped into the shop and started rummaging. And found two pairs of trousers, trousers that once upon a time would have been a respectable if not colourful choice for a gentleman of my age. They were bought, I felt smug that I had some new trousers that could be described as fashionable.

In my head I am seeing this. But maybe with
my eyes open, and a little less energetic.

This is where the problem lies. The collective male yoof of today have subverted fashion. They have cruelly adopted ‘respectable’ as their tribe style. Look at them all, crowding on street corners with their clean trainers, their brightly coloured slacks, neatly ironed tops and jackets too! They are wearing fitted jackets! They are the very vision of how my Mum wanted me to dress in the 80s when all I wanted to do was wear some ripped up jeans, muddy my Vans and slip on a denim jacket with rock bands written all over it in marker pen. So now, as a mature male who has finally come round to my mother’s way of thinking, wanting to buy clothes that have personality yet say I am mature enough to raise children, I do it only to realise that I am now basically dressing as a teenage boy. Damn you teen boys and your subversive fashions. I now look like I am trying to slip under the age radar and hang out with One Direction or Olly Murs’s Dad attempting to be as cool as his son. (I have no real knowledge of Olly Murs or his Dad – I am sure his Dad is great).

What I may have achieved.

 

My colleagues were kind to me when I turned up at work in my new trousers. Some would say overly kind. I could see in their eyes that most of them thought ‘Really?!’ but I suppose it was a talking point. Actually, as I was walking to workI turned a corner only for a stranger to physically recoil at the sight of my slacks whilst gasping 'Woah!' a little too loud for my liking.

But what really rings in my ears is what Blondie said to me as I left for work, ‘Hey Mister, we need to talk about your jeans…. Carrot Man.’ This was accompanied by a look of… well I can’t really describe the look… but it wasn’t pride. Then Ginger went through all of the things I could team the trousers up with, rejecting each one and finally deciding that they, 'don't really go with much Dad.'

So my lesson learnt here are that my children are now of an age where what I wear matters to them and they are likely to vet any outfit I put on from now. I could have fun with this. Wait until they see my aubergine pantaloons.

All said an done it could be much worse, I could be wearing Super Dry.

 

* Please note that all references to our children’s talents are subject to the usual narrow view of a parent.

BBC OR ITV

I notice that CITV finally leaves its 20s this weekend., this was rather a like a slap in the face with the old stick. This got me to musing on my youth as seen through the square eyed boy that I was. There is a common myth that when growing up you were either a BBC kid or a (C)ITV kid, this is as false as my wife’s continued assumption that my parents banned me from watching ITV kids programmes. For the record, they didn’t, how could they, they were at work, I remember with great fondness letting myself in from school and climbing up onto the kitchen surface to help myself to a packet of Skydivers and a Cherry Coke then settling down to watch Sons and Daughters in one of our totally cool egg shaped swivel chairs.

It was basically this but with a heady whiff
of 70s channelled through the eye scorchingly
palette of orange.

 

There are some hard and fast facts about the eclectic diet of children’s TV that are universal. Grab hold of any child in their late thirties, apply a Chinese burn or a chicken scratch and they will confess to the following:

Blue Peter

Blue Peter was never good. It does not have a hold on our childhood hearts one little bit. Sure there was the occasional moment when children’s presenter maverick Simon Groom cracked a funny, or they tried to burn some Cubs with a camp fire or Sarah Greene looked slightly hot. And yes I did enter a design competition for a new Peter Duncan suit – but here is the rub – there was nothing else on in this time slot! In the early days I am pretty sure BBC2 was all Ceefax or test card, ITV had gone to the news prematurely and that was it. We were not watching it out of choice; we were watching it because well-meaning parents up and down the country were using it as a televisual Ritalin to calm us before tea. They never watched it with us because the producers were wise to the fact that if parents saw how trite the programme was they would worry for our collective sanity, so every week ‘Mums and Aunts or Dads and Uncles and Grandparents’ were ‘sent out of the room’ so that we could make stuff for them. Total genius smokescreen, but it was the children who suffered. How many house fires were started by candles attached to wire coat hangers shrouded in highly flammable tinsel? The fact it is still going is one of life's great secrets.

This was not a phone-in. This was three presenters calling their
agents. I like these three despite everything else though.

The Smurfs and Super Gran

The Smurfs was the only child friendly bit of TV immediately after Sunday Lunch. This was designed to make youths up and down our  Sceptred Isle wash up the carnage of the roast in double quick time. In our house we would do this – my sister and I – arguing about who would wash and who would dry. Soaking never seemed to be an option as this would look as though we hadn’t completed the job – so the loser would always wash and boil their little hands in the volcanic temperature of the water. The hairs never grew back on my hands. Still The Smurfs were OK. I would credit them as highly as a diversion, there was singing, bright colours and terrible stories in a kind of Snow White/Hobbit mash-up with blue food dye kind of way. It served a purpose. Later that Sunday, after everyone had been napping, homework had been grudgingly done (for grudgingly please read ‘half-arsed attempt’) came Super Gran. I hated this programme. It personified cheap and British patronising TV dreamed up in such a way that a foetus would feel intellectually superior. The scripts were so poor it made Worzel Gummidge look like Pushkin. Anybody who tells you that this truly bizarre Tam o'Shanter wearing aggressive octogenarian was a force for good is not of sane mind. She should have known better! Taking her grandson into battle with local organised crime is punishable by prison these days. It was an on screen migraine of accents and plot lines (this coming from a once resident of Caledonia) so the people who awarded it an Emmy simply must have been on acid during the voting period. It had so many big names attached to it from Billy Connolly’s theme tune to Spike Milligan and George Best I just cannot fathom how it ended up so awful.

Really? I mean REALLY George?!

 

ThunderCats

One word, GENIUS. ‘Got to reach sword of omens’, ‘ThunderCats Ho!’. The creators’ clever use of cat breed as a racial signifier to suggest to all children that we can co-exist in harmony was ground-breaking.  It also taught us that Mummies were a little bit iffy. I have yet to see the current re-boot of the franchise, I am sure it doesn’t hold a candle to the feline original, but I am sure it is still pretty cracking. Thursdays I believe, just before we went swimming, followed by a giant cookie from Waitrose.

The eternal question, 'What kind of pet would a cat have?'
was finally answered.

 

The Pink Panther and Snoopy

Unusual bedfellows I hear you say. But not really. Apart from the regular slot on a Saturday after that bizarre football scores programme front by David Icke, the Pink Panther went onto a random scheduling life much the same as Snoopy. These cartoons were a bit like Easter, you knew it was coming, you knew you would get and egg of some sort but when it was handed to you the joy of feeling its weight, filled with Smarties was almost overwhelming. And that is the thing with these cartoons, you knew a cartoon was coming but when you heard it was one of these you had a full-fat cartoon, a cartoon with add-ons, in the Panther show you got not just one Panther but sometimes two, a dragonfly or an aardvark and perhaps a French detective. In the Schultz corner, pretty much always a double hitter, some comedy mime where a dog and bird pretend to be fighter pilots, a miskicked football and some wisdom. These were rare and treasured times. The Pink Panther once made me cry when he was homeless on Christmas Eve and it started to snow. Charlie Brown also managed this with A Charlie Brown Christmas. We have never had a shit Christmas Tree as a result of this. These would be weekday during a holiday period, mid-afternoon, accompanied by some sort of luxury snack, macadamias perhaps or even a stolen liqueur.

Christmas seems to linger like a bad fart in a lift.
You can take your decorations down now everyone.

 

Dramarama

I pretended to like this. All my friends pretended to like this. Most people still probably pretend to have liked it.  It was in fact a child star vehicle filled with bumptious people being squeezed out of the unholy child acting sausage factories that are Sylvia Young, Italia Conti and Arts Ed. Watched on a Wednesday, I would normally be unwashed from ‘Games’ and possibly eating a sneaky cheese sandwich ahead of my Mum getting back from work and making tea. OK, do you know what, it wasn’t that bad. It was no Jossy’s Giants but should be filed under missable but watch it if you are in.

80s graphics. Love em.

 

Saturday Morning TV

Tiswas was great, it can’t be denied. I attached myself briefly to the tail end of this anarchy. I had no idea what I was watching. Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, the tantalising thought that the really crap birthday or Christmas present was one phone call away from being swapped for something you actually needed was almost toxic. This early version of children only EBay was something to be marvelled at. To this day I know the phone number off by heart 01 811 8055 the same way that I know the old post code too, W12 8QT. I am not sure how I reconciled riding the streets on my Grifter with watching this programme – I clearly managed it somehow. I left Saturday morning TV only to return twice more, Going Live as it was a diversion from proper secondary school homework and What’s Up Doc on ITV as it coincided with University and the omnipresent Saturday morning hangover.

The finest day was when a child successfully swapped their parents
for a slinky.

The Cult Programme

There are many other shows on both sides of the TV divide that we love and/or hate;  Super Ted, Bananaman, Count Duckula, Orm and Cheap, Wizbit, Willow the Wisp, Pipkins, the Flumps, Pinky and the Brain, Battle of the Planets, Top Cat (Boss Cat), Captain Caveman, The Box of Delights, Rentaghost, The Children of Greene Knowe, The Fraggles, Press Gang, Chocky’s Children, Rugrats, Newsround (John Craven’s and otherwise) but there is one programme universally devoured by us kids and that is the story of the city dwelling gay civil servant, who, at the weekends loved nothing more that stepping out of the closet and indulging in any number of fantasies. Mr Benn. What child didn’t want to live in Festive Road where the kids run feral, where, even in the early 70s, a man is not outed in a local tabloid or driven from his home by an angry mob for the crime of living a singular life shrouded in weekend mystery. There are only 14 episodes, yet everyone seems as if new as a shiny pin every time it is viewed. So crammed with detail from games of the kids on Festive Road through the camp shopkeeper’s shop to the tiny trinkets Benn brings home, I continue to spot something new even 39 years later. The true heart of Mr Benn lies in the soothing narration by the velvet tonsils of Ray Brooks, listening to him tell the story was like having your eardrums massaged (in a good way – am not sure if there is a bad way – but even if there was – this is the good way – not the bad). I watched this the lunchtime that I went home and ate an entire family sized tin of rhubarb and rather unsurprisingly threw it all up again in Mrs Bhatt’s poetry class in year two of the juniors. Subsequent episodes were usually accompanied by eating a Trio.

Off to G-A-Y again.

 

So there it is. A rambling mismatch of some of the great and poor progs from our youth. I appreciate I have left out some TV gold, Why Don’t You for example, a kids show wrapped so tightly in its own irony is eventually asphyxiated itself. Play Away, the training boards for one our greatest thesps who then went on to make films as closely linked as Deadringers, Damage and Lolita. Or perhaps least memorably Rude Dog and the Dweebs aka cartoon faecal matter. I don't hold to this era too tightly, I have no intention of being the kind of Dad that moans about the quality of the contemporary as you just get a blank stare back, as I received during Back to the Future where I had to describe what things were in the current as well as the past. The fact that the Future young Michael J Fox yearns for so longingly is actually a pre-birth past of some 27 years for my daughters hit me like a fast moving continent. Enough of this I have to go and watch X-Men.

THE UBIQUITY OF SANTA AND POOR BRAND MANAGEMENT

Why is Santa everywhere this time of year? Stop! Don’t say what you are about to say. Sure it is ‘his moment’ and he ‘owns Christmas’ and yes he should be doing the odd public appearance – but really the guy is on deadline. If my boss saw me gallivanting in a shameless self-promotional charabanc across the globe when in actual fact I had to deliver – in all senses of the word – I would be out of the door quicker than you could say ‘Santa Claus is coming to town, again and again and will be appearing in person at various locations doing a variety of odd things....’

Who wins from this proliferation of public appearances? Surely nobody is paying Santa for these impromptu yet carefully scheduled pop-ups as we all know that he is a genuinely philanthropic individual. Also maybe he is a registered charity whose business cannot be bought in such a way and, besides, he is a pretty straight up and down fella who, if you attempted to give him cash, would certainly say ‘Ho ho ho – you don’t need to do that I have been ‘owning Christmas from the goodness of my heart for centuries.’ From a capitalist perspective I have never witnessed Santa opening the London Stock exchange and thought ‘Ooh I must buy some shares’ or watched him bungee jump from a bridge in Middle Earth and thought 'Ooh I must go to New Zealand'. His being as a money spinner for other ruptures the very core of the Santa brand. And that brand is benevolent old man who does good things for kids. Which is a brand, I think you will agree, that needs protecting given recent developments.

Santa, all this dashing around is making you
a little ruddy. Have you had your cholesterol
checked lately?

This week alone Santa has appeared in Hungary getting a flu jab (I guess he is in the high risk category), cuddling lions at a safari park (this is a little too high risk this close the big night), numerous appearances around many capital cities on public transport either talking absolute drunken rot or throwing up (you need to up your game a bit here Santa – you are a brand that is respected), Reindeer racing in many Scandinavian countries (Santa this is blatant cheating - one world in one night by reindeer and they even let you submit an entry form?), numerous simultaneous incarcerations in Asian prisons (I hope you have a good lawyer, tick-tock tick-tock – it took Andy Dufresne 20 years to tunnel out of Shawshank – you have.. like.. just over a week),  then there is the abseiling, the skinny-dipping, the obligatory Santa Mankini appearance on Bondai, the slow moving procession round the streets of the UK on the back of a crappy looking van with numerous Rotary Clubs appearances, Santa getting married, Santa doing a marathon, Santa selling the Big Issue (who are you kidding Santa – the North Pole is your address, use it), Santa driving buses, Santa skateboarding, Santa turning on Obama’s Christmas tree lights (Hey Santa! He is the President of America – he’s got people who can do that shit for him!), Santa Scuba diving, Santa on several roller coasters, Santa surfing, Santa on the front line with troops (I appreciate the message of peace here Santa – but your brand palette is red – nobody’s troops are engaged in an area where red works as camouflage!), Santa sat forlornly in every department store in the world smelling slightly of dust and children’s sick – basically Santa you are doing too much!

NO! THIS SHOULD
NEVER HAVE HAPPENED!

 

If you contrast this with the popular belief that nobody actually sees Santa deliver the presents, all we are left with is reindeer poo on the front doorstep, sooty footprints (that are not all that easy to clean up) and some half eaten food – you wonder what Santa is trying to do here. He is humility personified surely? He doesn’t go out there giving it the Big I AM, he isn't The Lord Sugar or the other guy in the states with the datf hair, he quietly reads letters checks up on the iffy kids – packages and delivers with all efficiency of a tax paying benevolent Amazon.

I found this on the ES site under
'Before They Were Famous'

 

So my point is. Santa stop it with public appearances. Much like our politicians, it is sometimes better to be out of sight as it demonstrates you are doing the job you have been selected for. Stop getting in my Christmas media grill at every opportunity, not only are you damaging your brand you are also making my kids doubt your sincerity and you know what happens to fairies when kids stop believing.

I only want to see evidence of you on Christmas Eve.

Happy Christmas though!

Clear up after yourself Santa - or get one
of your elves to finish your food

 

 

WATCHES

Amid all the excitement of snow this morning, during which we checked in regularly with Mrs M to make sure the train line to London was fully operational (which sadly it was), came a wonderful pre-Christmas exchange from our younglings.

We were making breakfast when this occurred:

Blondie: Daddy – can I have an Ice Watch for Christmas?

Me: No way!
Blondie: Why not?
Me: Do you have any comprehension how much they cost and you can’t even tell the time.
Blondie: I can.
Me: OK (pointing at the kitchen clock adopting a high risk strategy) tell me what time it is and I will buy you one.
Blondie: (looks slightly panicked – whispers to Ginger – who whispers back) It is 8.30
Me: Ha. See! It is 7.30. Bad luck.
Blondie: (to Ginger) Why did you tell me the wrong time?
Ginger: So that Mummy and Daddy spend the money on me instead.
Blondie: (clearly pissed off, stomps out of the kitchen and shouts back) I’ll never learn if I don’t have a watch. And that is your fault Daddy.


I like her style.