Election Fever

There's still over a month to go, and I am officially SICK AND TIRED of the election already. I don't wish to see the smug faces of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband or Nigel Farage, or any of the other suspects on my telly ever again.  I am becoming more despairing by the day as the various levels of racist parties push their propaganda and scaremongering through my door.

Therefore, I am declaring this blog an Election-Free Zone.  Until May I will not entertain any mentions of politics, politicians, voting, schools being used as polling stations & therefore closed, or anything other than fairies, flowers and Frozen.

In fact, I am happily embracing watching children's telly with Squeaky for the next 5 weeks, at least they don't mention the election on Disney.  I'm slightly dreading the next one already, in 5 years time we will firmly be in the grip of CBBC, and if my childhood was anything to go by, they start teaching political stuff in the top end of primary when there's an election to deal with.

In fact, this is as political as I will get.  We had mock elections, linked up with the kids telly of the day when I was in the top end of primary, and again in the top end of secondary school. I don't really remember the first, but for the secondary episode, the school took it very, very seriously. As did a small number of the kind of kids that do at that age. The rest of us were slightly less interested.  A group of the boys in my year took it upon themselves to stand in the name of one of the lesser parties, and launched the kind of election campaigning more commonly seen in the US than the UK, with rallies, entertainment, and full on electioneering.  They won with a landslide majority.  Unfortunately for the school it was a landslide majority for the Monster Raving Loony Party, and as such they refused to return our results to Children's BBC.  I was desperate for our school's proudest moment to appear on Newsround. Instead we had a special assembly reinforcing the seriousness and importance of politics and why we should get properly involved in things rather than treating life as a big joke.

Me? Nah.

Lunchbox Woes

Nope, not a "I've run out of bento inspiration" post. I have neither the patience nor ability to make pretty shaped nonsense out of Squeaky's sandwiches, she will only ignore then in favour of yogurt, babybel and playing in the yard anyway.

Instead, I am bemoaning progress. Back in the day, a lunchbox was a solid plastic affair, with a picture of My Little Pony or Rainbow Brite on the outside, and space for a matching thermos flask. Or at least it was for a fortnight or so, before I lost it again, and it was replaced with a brown Tupperware box that was physically impossible to lose.  My Little Pony has had a makeover in recent years, and so has the lunchbox. Now, they are made from some sort of squishy thermo insulated fabric stuff. Great for keeping things cool (that said, I freeze squeezy yogurts, and fetch one out first thing in the morning & it's just as effective at cooling sandwiches), but gah, they are VILE.

School water bottle left at school. Again.

I'm sorry, but it's physically impossible to get these things clean. There's a permanent whiff of sour yogurt, fermented fruit juice and something that may once have been a Pom-bear.  I can only think of two possible solutions: 1 - a boil wash, or 2 - a flamethrower. At least with hard plastic you could get into the corners, these things have seams for goodness sake, where the ming seems to congregate.

I haven't got a dishwasher (I know, pity me), and there will be a meltdown of epic proportions if I do anything that might risk the Frozen lunchbag's appearance. But short of drawing Elsa on a Tupperware in Sharpie marker, what can I do? I'm going to throw up before the end of term at this rate.

I actually have a couple of really nice (in my opinion), bento-esque lunchboxes, made of solid plastic, easy to clean, and generally far more acceptable to my delicate sensibilities.  However, the lack of Disney branding makes them thoroughly unacceptable in the eyes of Squeaky.  I'm at my wits' end.

There's a whole separate moan about how matching flasks used to come with the solid plastic lunchbox, and were designed to fit in the flask space.  Now flasks, or sports cap bottles more often, are a separate entity, and an additional £5 plus to the coffers of whichever tv channel your child is currently obsessed with.  Not to mention the official school issued water bottle which never seems to come home with madam, and leaks all over her school bag on the very rare occasion I actually see it. (Secret admission here, I replaced it with one I had in a goodie bag from somewhere, and allowed the school one to meet with a tragic car-running-over type accident)

Does anyone still sell the Old Skool style lunchboxes? I'm getting desperate.

How young is too young?

While sitting in the cinema eagerly awaiting the Frozen Sing-along, I saw the trailer for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.  And of course, I got to thinking (it's a dangerous habit, I know).  The film is rated 12A, which surprised me, because surely the Turtles are aimed at an audience much younger than 12!  But from what I saw of the trailer I wasn't entirely shocked, as it looked to be quite a violent film.

Fortunately, Squeaky isn't at all interested in watching Turtles, according to her they are "boring and for boys" - which I can't really argue with, and I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to see it either.  However, at least 2 of her boyfriends are Turtles fans, and have been pressing their families to take them to see the film over the half term break.

Small children out of shot, demanding ice cream

Now, I had a little look online to understand exactly what a 12A rating means, as it's been a long time since I had to be all that concerned about film ratings.  According to the BBFC website:

"[The] BBFC considers the content of 12A rated films to be suitable for children aged 12 and over, and we would not recommend taking very young children to see them. Works classified at these categories may upset children under 12 or contain material which many parents will find unsuitable for them."

Vague, but clearly it's leaving the decision making to the parents, rather than making a firm decision themselves.  I'm not quite convinced by that.  OK, some parents will make appropriate decisions about what their child watches, but others clearly do not. I visit families at home on a daily basis and am shocked at what I see very young children watching on music channels and dvds.  Not to mention various high profile cases of young offenders being repeatedly exposed to violent movies and video games.

I'm not saying that watching a 12A would automatically lead to a child becoming a young offender, but surely even with adult accompaniment, there should be some limit to how young children are able to watch films in the cinema.  I actually do consider the content of PG (parental guidance) films before I let Squeaky watch them, and there's no way I'd consider letting her go to a 12A film, even if it was "Barbie, Tinkerbell and Frozen go to the Ice Cream Shop" (which would be pretty much her dream movie, especially if they rode My Little Ponies to get there).

I sort of question what's going on?  A film which clearly targets a young audience, but has content that is unsuitable for them.  Why does it need to?  The television series isn't restricted to after the 9.00 watershed, so why make a film too violent or scary for the characters' fans?  I think I'd rather see a firm minimum age rating - be that 5, 9, whatever, than this wishy-washy 12A nonsense. If it's suitable, it's suitable, if it's not, it's not. Simple as that.

What's your opinion? How old, or young, a child would you take to a 12A film? And what regard do you have for film ratings at home?

(Photo thanks to Michelle Storey, used with permission. Other cinema brands are available.)

Don't Forget The Lyrics

It's the heat.  It gets to me, certain songs just go better with the warm weather.  And so, my brain started singing In The Summertime.  I got to thinking about the song, and the 1995 cover version by Shaggy. More so, I got to thinking about the lyrics.

I love the Mungo Jerry version, with its crazy sound effects.  But if you listen to it, it's a pretty nasty song.  I can fully see why Shaggy changed "have a drink, have a drive, and see what you can find" for the sanitised "driving round, to see what I can find".  In fact, if my memories are accurate, I think the original lyrics were used as a public safety film against drink driving.  Even away from that bit, though, it's still an uncomfortable listen. "If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal, if her daddy's poor just do what you feel".  Excuse me?  Is a woman's value & virtue entirely linked to her father's bank balance?  Gee, thanks 1970!

Shane - Doesn't Forget The Lyrics

And I carried on thinking, while listening to Squeaky's choice of music in the car.  Justin Fletcher.  No, don't panic, he's just got some good examples.  On one of his CDs he sings Nelly The Elephant.  And his elephant doesn't slip her iron chains, she simply runs away.  I don't think she goes to Hindustan either, but I'm too warm to go & find out for sure.  Fair enough, animal cruelty isn't something to encourage in toddlers.

Then on his latest CD, he sings The Clapping Song. You know, "3, 6, 9, the goose drank wine..." Only his monkey doesn't choke, he thinks it was a joke. And I still have no idea what his momma wouldn't buy him, but it's not a rubber dolly (and I was very disappointed that he didn't kiss a soldier!).  The thing that strikes me strangest about this particular sanitisation is that the goose is still drinking wine and the monkey chewing tobacco, two things that really aren't pre-schooler appropriate, probably more so than the monkey choking.  Couldn't the monkey chew spearmint gum or something?  And the goose drink lime?

(While I was googling for the non-existant lyrics for the Justin version, I found more covers of The Clapping Song than I ever wanted to know about. Aaron Carter, Lady Gaga, dear oh dearie me)

I'm not sure how I feel about sanitising lyrics. On one hand, I'm glad that drink driving isn't an acceptable theme for pop music, but on the other, aren't there enough other songs to cover that don't need the dettol treatment? They're the product of a different time, with different norms.  There's plenty of S Club, Steps, Hannah Montana, TakeSpiceBoyzLife type songs out there, just dying for a cover for a new audience, that don't need their lyrics messing with.  It gets to the point of that atrocious "Christmas Is All Around" from Love, Actually.  Seriously, that was just horrifying.

Sweet Dreams Aren't Made Of This

Don't even get me started on switching the gender of a song for the cover version. Especially when it's completely irrelevant. Cher, I'm looking at you.

What do you think?

Beaten to the punch

I'd been having a really good thought this week.  One that was going to make for a fantastic blog post, just as soon as Daddy was on a late shift & I got some uninterrupted keyboard time.  It was going to make everyone sit up and say "Woah, yeah, I hadn't thought of that, but you're right!", and make me the star of the blogging world for at least half an hour, until something else distracted everyone & I slipped back into obscurity.

And then I picked up this week's Radio Times, and found I'd been beaten to it. By the letters page, of all places!  Such are the trials of a part-time blogger's existence.  Still, the post, such as it is, went something like this...

Have you been watching CBeebies recently?  No, I mean actually watching?  Because I've noticed something.  It seems to be getting progressively more & more male-centric.  Where are our children's female role models? Where are the strong female characters?  Let's have a look at an average day's viewing, shall we?  I'm looking to identify the main or majority characters. Where they have no clear gender, I'll mark as Gender Neutral, where there are multiple lead characters and a rough balance, I'll mark as Ensemble shows.  You may want to disagree with some of them, but these are just my opinions. Schedule is Monday 16 April 2012, from Radio Times.  Hidden behind a jump, because it's one heck of a list!

Pull Your Finger Out!

A two parter.

Part 1 - a mini rant.  How long does it take a flaming solicitor to get the searches done on our (potential) new house? I want it NOW, not some indistinct point in the future. NOW dammit!

Part 2. Squeaky is a nose-picker, as are many kids her age. We do the best we can to discourage her from this in the daytime, but we have a bigger problem. She picks her nose in her sleep. To the extent that she gives herself nosebleeds.  There's something quite horrifying about being greeted by a bloodstained toddler at 6-something in the morning.  Aside from keeping her nails short, has anyone got any suggestions what we can do?  HELP!!

Bad Examples

There was something in the news a while back now about Peppa Pig not wearing a seatbelt & promoting a bad influence on children.

I got thinking about that again recently, and wondered how many more examples of bad practice you can find, without really looking, in children's tv & related products.  And the flipside, how many "subtle" acts of good practice can you spot?

Image from bbc.co.uk

Well, I'm watching Mister Maker right now.  He's got a telly screen in the front of the Maker Mobile, which transmits "live" pictures, so he can talk to Mini Makers.  Except that he's driving.  OK it's hands free, I'm not going to go off on a phones rant.  But.  It's illegal to have a tv (or similar) screen switched on in view of the driver while driving.  I learned that last week on Cops With Cameras.  So Mister Maker gets a slapped wrist from me, 3 points on his license & a £60 fine from the friendly police who give him a wave.

Image from amazon.com

And I was reading one of our Maisy books the other night, Maisy Makes Gingerbread, if you must know.  And Maisy uses eggs, butter, flour, sugar & ginger to make her gingerbread.  And then licks out the bowl, with a raw egg mixture in it.  Now I know we all did it, and it didn't do us any harm *twitch*, but in these enlightened, post-salmonella days, raw eggs = Big No-No.  Maisy gets a slap on the wrist from me, an upset tummy & a prescription for Dioralyte.

On the positives though, CBeebies is actually really quite good at that.  Every time the Pontipines & Wottingers ride the Ninky Nonk, they wear seat belts.  Sarah-Jane (ick) and the children on Mighty Mites wear assorted protective gear before doing anything risky, and even Grandad Tumble wears a helmet when he rides a bike.  Also, the fact that I haven't yet been able to rid the world of Justin, or Sarah-Jane suggests their safety is a consideration at CBeebies Central.

I know, the real answers to all this include the phrases "get out a bit more" and "it's only pretend", but pretend has just as big an impact on children as reality, more so sometimes.  It's not deliberate, I don't think that for a second, but unconscious errors can still have serious impact.

Brave/Stupid?

The weather is MINGING.  There's no other word for it, it's minging, plain & simple.  To the extent that I've had to put the heating back on - my excuse is that I really need to get the bed linen dry so I can make up the spare bed as I've got a friend staying in the week, and I can't leave it damp in the washing machine indefinitely.  But really it's because I'm cold.

I had planned to hit Swansea like a large hitting thing today, there's a couple of car boot sales I wanted to mooch round, as well as the NCT sale.  But seeing as the weather has decided to dump 6 months' worth of rain on us in the space of not much time at all, I gave the car boots a swerve.  No point in drowning myself in a muddy field when the only vendors there will be the mobile phone guys and a couple of coffee vans.

So I headed to the NCT sale instead.  That was indoors so I figured I'd be safe.  HA!  I've got a few gripes about NCT sales in general, but I tend to forget them when faced with the siren call of "bargains! cheap & pretty things!"  It was hammering down.  But this is the NCT sale, and when they say general admission at 10.30, they do not mean 10.29.59.  They mean 10.30 and not a second before, so we all had to queue in the school car park like a hoard of drowned rats, and everyone was dripping on the clothes.  Would it really have hurt to start letting people in a couple of minutes early (yes, I know it's members' admission for the first 15 mins, but there weren't any members going in, just drowned rats outside)

I've been to the Cardiff sale a couple of times, and I really enjoy it.  It's not exactly practical, the toys & equipment are all upstairs, so you either have to take a friend & take it in turns to wrangle babies & pushchairs, or park up somewhere downstairs & hope no-one mistakes your buggy for one for sale.  But there's some monumental bargains to be had, some really beautiful stuff for very good prices.  Same can't be said for Swansea.  Same rugby scrum, same level of mania, but for what?  I'm really sorry Swansea people, but most of the stuff was tat.  And expensive tat.  If I want to pay full price for things, I'll go to the shop & buy them new.  Particularly when they're supermarket clothes anyway, which aren't really known for their durability. Honestly. The amount of stuff that was full price, or nearly full price was amazing.  Don't get me wrong, I still found myself a few bargains (more on that tomorrow), but I had to work for them.

Then off to Mothercare for some drawer locks (Squeaky has decided that the little chest of drawers doubles as a climbing frame), and home in the rain.

Update of Random Points

Oh, the excitement!  Today, we ate our dinner sitting in the high chair for the first time.  And with our new high chair toy to distract us from the fact that we were eating something new.  Actually, that's a point.  Do you know how FEW high chair toys there are available on the high street?  Yep, there's plenty on Amazon, but that would involve waiting for deliveries, etc, and Squeaky wanted one NOW.  Argos have a choice of one, overpriced and not very nice.  Tescos have none.  Ditto Wilkos, Boots, Matalan and everywhere else I could think of the other day.  Last chance saloon today, Asda.  Hooray!  They had a cute, Fisher Price, reasonably priced one, in fact, the one I found on Amazon only as a Japanese import.  And Squeaky likes it enough to bash it about while having spoonfuls of bolognaise shovelled into her.  No spag, just bol, with added sweet potato & parsnip (yuck, but she seems to like it) mixed in to stop it being All About The Mince.

Yeah, that as well.  Our diet has expanded to include Weetabix, Petits Filous, tuna, chicken, pork, beef, and most things I offer her, unless they involve potatoes.  For some reason potatoes are not for eating.  Le sigh.  She'd better move on from that, or life is going to be complicated.  She was happy to suck on a chip the other week, so what's wrong with my mash, I don't quite know.

And random strangers are annoying me again.  Yes, she's a small child.  She was small when she was born, she continues to be at the smaller end of the scale, but she's fine, I have a letter from the hospital that says just that.  I'm sure your 8 month old, bottle fed nephew IS twice her size, but that might be something to do with being a) older, b) male, and c) bottle fed.  Squeaky is her very own size & shape, she eats plenty, poos plenty, and is none of your business.  Grrr.

Swimming revisited

So today, as previously mentioned, we gave our usual swimming session in Aberfan a miss, to go over to Aberdare, where I'd been told the pool was warmer.

Drove half an hour to get there, and found. The pool was closed. For a school swimming gala (i.e. booked months in advance). Nothing on the website, nothing outside the leisure centre, nothing told to the other mums in previous weeks. Nothing. And as you can imagine, that lead to quite a number of upset children, and parents, who'd planned their day around a swimming trip.

That was their one & only chance. I'm going back to Aberfan next week, and staying there.

Swimming

When we went on our little jaunt to North Wales last month, we took the opportunity to introduce Squeaky to the joys of swimming. While both of us are swimmers, me moreso than SqueakyDaddy, we both learned late in childhood, and wanted to avoid the same happening to Squeaky. As per usual, she charmed everyone around her and took to it like, well, a duck to water.

On returning home, I popped into the council pool in town, looking for a parent & baby type session, or at least a good time to visit with a small squeaky creature in tow. The answer I got from the receptionists? "Just put her in the bath, she won't know the difference"! Honest! I only wish I was making it up. Most unlike me, I was too shocked to reply, and too shocked to make a scene, demand an apology, speak to the manager. So instead, I'm just telling everyone, in person & on the wilds of the internet. Don't go to Rhydycar leisure centre in Merthyr Tydfil, ok? (The fact the pool was closed for AGES due to a cryptosporidium outbreak they couldn't kill doesn't add much confidence either).

Fortunately, due to my good friends at the breastfeeding group, I've now found not one, but two, baby swimming sessions. One in the slightly closer to my house, Aberfan community centre pool, and one in Aberdare. We're going to try Aberdare tomorrow, as all the reports suggest the water's far warmer. Splish splash.