Dear Dave

  Hedgehog overdose

Dear Dave,

I've got a sore head. I think it's partly due to the cold I've had for the last few days but it's mostly down to the cable channel we discovered recently which is filled almost entirely with ancient Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers cartoons. The boys have gone crazy over it. They demand to watch it every time it's their turn to choose. Coupled with the fact that Lewis got various Sonic games for his birthday, I think it's fair to say that I'm suffering from an overdose of The Blue Spiky One and his associates. I close my eyes and I see Dr Robotnik. It's not pleasant.

In an effort to recover, I'm going to take it easy next week, so don't expect any letters until the week after that. Hopefully I'll have shaken the disturbing image of Princess Toadstool at a Milli Vanilli concert by then. (Presumably because of licensing issues, no actual Milli Vanilli music features in the episode. Cartoon facsimiles of the duo dance around on stage to a generic melody. They move their lips but, spookily, no words come out... Then they get kidnapped by Bowser and have to be rescued by plumbers.) No wonder my head hurts.

Before I go and curl up under a blanket, I thought you might want to hear about the latest strange behaviour from my nephew Ned. I think I might just be able to jot it down before my brain explodes.

He turned up here after school last Wednesday. When I answered the door, I found him lurking on the front step. Even wearing his uniform, he looked dishevelled in that gangly way peculiar to fourteen-year-old boys. He grunted at me, walked in, dumped his bag and then slouched off to the study to play on my Xbox.

"Er, hi," I said.

I followed him and watched him rifle through my games collection. He quickly selected Tomb Raider: Anniversary, switched everything on without incident and then spent several minutes adjusting my office chair to his satisfaction.

I left him to it while I checked on the boys, started Marie on some painting and looked out stuff for tea. When I returned a quarter of an hour later, he hadn't got past the START screen. It features Lara standing in a ruin. If you don't press anything for a few seconds, she looks bored, yawns and then does some stretching.

Lara Croft doing some stretching is pretty hypnotic.

"Do your parents know you're here?" I asked

"Nope," he replied, his eyes fixed on the monitor.

"Is that a problem?"

"Nope."

I had no reason to believe he was lying. Chris and Catriona are normally at work when Ned comes out of school so who knows what he usually gets up to? Compared with many of the alternatives, my study wasn't such a bad place for him to be loitering. I tried to make him feel at home. "Do you want anything to drink?"

"Nope."

"How about to eat?"

"Nope."

"Can you say anything other than 'Nope'?"

"Yep."

"OK," I said. He was certainly acting like he felt at home. I decided not to push things. "Well, let me know if you need anything..." My voice trailed off.


...


Time slipped away.


...



...



"There's purple on my nose!"

Wha...?

I was broken from a dream by Marie's cry from the kitchen. I'd forgotten she was still painting. I realised that I'd been staring at Lara myself for a good couple of minutes.

"It's a great game. You should start playing," I called over my shoulder as I hurried through to clean up.

"Uh-huh," said Ned and finally got going.

He stayed for another hour or so and then emerged from the study to collect his bag. "Bye," he said as I poked my head into the hall to see what he was doing.

"Good to see you," I said. "Come again."

He grunted and let himself out.

I wonder what that was all about?

Anyway, I'm going to go lie down. Hope you're all well.

Take care.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: Ned, TV

  9:00 AM - Permanent Link - 4 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Getting that fimbling feeling

Dear Dave,

Remember back when the Teletubbies were going to make the nation's children stupid, unable to speak properly and sexually confused? What with all the furore over the negative influences of computer games, no one's really grumbled about the educational content of TV programmes for pre-school children for a while. Is this really justified? Should we be more concerned? Is it time to write horrified letters to the tabloids?

In order to answer these questions, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I lived a day according to children's TV. What follows is an account of my findings. Be afraid...

The day started out as usual with the mad rush to get the kids ready for school and nursery. On this occasion, however, I insisted they were enthusiastic, courteous and smiling at all times. This seemed to involve me shouting a great deal more than TV had led me to believe. When they were gone, I tried singing to get some woodland creatures to do the washing up. This didn't work very well either.

Undeterred, I moved onto the other chores. First up was dealing with the nest of Flowerpot Men in the garden. (The little blighters have been stealing garden implements to play pranks on each other.) I'd constructed a cunning trap in preparation the night before. An invisible thread led from a seemingly abandoned trowel to a twig wedged into the mechanism of some scales. Pulling the thread yanked the twig out of position, tipping the scales and releasing a ball bearing into a marble run. After circling round and dropping through the maze, the bearing landed on the switch for a fan which blew a paper aeroplane into the first of five hundred and twelve neatly lined dominoes. The final domino pressed a button on a remote control.

This then napalmed the entire patio.

The soot covering the back door made me hopeful of success and I went outside to investigate. Unfortunately, although the trap had operated perfectly, it had failed to deal with Bill and Ben. There were just a couple of barbecued pigeons. The neighbour's black and white cat was giving me the evil eye from behind the shed. (It's normally orange.) The trowel was also somewhat the worse for wear.

I reset the trap and went round pulling up any little weeds I could find, just to make sure the miscreants got the message that I meant business.

The garden was looking a bit charred, so I called a builder and asked if he could fix it. He said he could. I tidied up, ready for his arrival, by putting some of the debris in the wheelie bin. A shaggy green monster with big eyebrows tried to come out and teach me about the letter 'R'. I battered it back with a stick.

Feeling that things weren't going that well, I decided to cook myself a hearty breakfast to cheer myself up. (Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, after all.) Sausages sounded good. I even knew a song about sausages. I imagined myself surrounded by beaming children, all of us eating and singing about sausages. Then I remembered the kids were at school but, you know, the sausage craving had already taken hold. I found a frying pan, performed a short slapstick routine and opened the fridge.

The sausages were gone.

I started hunting around for them but then I stopped. I contemplated how a typical children's TV character would react in this type of situation. I realised I was getting it all wrong. I stopped searching and immediately went round to all my friends and neighbours and accused them each in turn of stealing my sausages. They denied all knowledge. I didn't believe them. They refused to play with me any more. I made a toy car out of yogurt pots.

It was time to collect Marie from nursery. I headed along to the school and, as we were getting her coat on, I explained that we were going to pretend to be Fimbles for the rest of the day. She wasn't having any of it. She wanted to wear a pink wig and do a song and dance routine about the tastiness of vegetables. I shrugged and joined in, leaping about to the jaunty melody while the other nursery kids formed a chorus line. It was fantastic. Everyone gave each other high-fives and I finished things off by running up the wall and doing a double back flip.

After a quick trip to Accident & Emergency, we went to a cafe for lunch. When the waitress came to take my order, I insisted she choose something for me, preferably something related to my job. I did stipulate, however, that she ensure it was a recipe for which they did not have all the ingredients, thus forcing one of the kitchen staff to fly off on a spoon to procure the necessary resources. I told her this would make their cafe the best in the world, as long as they all jumped around while doing the washing up.

The waitress looked sceptical. She played along, though. At least until I tried to pay for my Used Nappy Curry with a cheerful note and an IOU for some babysitting. She made me do the washing up without the aid of woodland creatures or jumping. I accused her of stealing my sausages. It didn't go well...

I hobbled home with Marie in tow to discover that the builder hadn't finished. More to the point, he hadn't even arrived. I phoned him up and asked if he'd been delayed by any mischievous scarecrows. He said he'd come and take a look next week. I told him that right away would be better but I'd settle for a visit from a couple of his talking vehicles. He hung up. (I assumed it was in his haste to get to work.)

It got a bit windy, so I strapped a flatscreen TV to my tummy and headed outside. We watched England lose at cricket.

"Again! Again!" giggled my Scottish daughter.

And it was so.

After that, we had a while before the boys came out of school, so I took the girl for a trip on a bus. I gave the driver some money and then asked him to take us to a place where they made cheese.

He said he was only going as far as the castle.

He looked a little plump. On the basis of this, I accused him of stealing my sausages.

We ended up walking and settled for buying some cheese in Tesco. I did sing a song about it, though, so the trip wasn't an entire waste. We collected the boys on the way home. Disappointingly, they didn't want to be Fimbles either. We had to do another dance routine about vegetables. Some of my stitches burst and I barely made it back to our house.

After a short rest, I went out into the garden to check how the builder was getting on. He still wasn't there. A couple of Flowerpot Men and a squirrel were lying in wait for me, however. They pressed the button on the remote as I stepped outside and I was forced to dive backwards into the house, closely followed by tongues of flame which set the kitchen on fire. I dialled 999, detailed our predicament and then made myself a coffee, safe in the knowledge that Fireman Sam (or possibly the Mario Brothers) would come and rescue us promptly.

Sure enough, some of Sam's colleagues arrived and put out the blaze. They brought PC Plum with them. I got him to take a look at the pigeons and tell me about them. Then I accused him of stealing my sausages. He arrested me for arson.

As he was cuffing me, he discovered the missing sausages in my back pocket. They'd been there all along!

I gave everyone a heart-felt apology and PC Plum decided to let me off with a stern warning about not playing with highly flammable chemicals. He also told me to take some cookies to all my friends as a way of making up to them too.

How we laughed.

Then I woke up to discover it had all been a dream...

It was an eye-opening experience, nonetheless. Computer games are nothing compared with some of the nonsense out there. It's persuaded me that I should spend more time talking to the kids about what they watch. Then again, it's going to take a few weeks until I'm fully recovered from the trauma, so I might just take it easy for a while.

I wonder what's on TV...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Coming soon: I move up an age bracket with my investigation. I turn my scientific analysis to the worrying influence of Harry Potter and spend a week approaching every situation with one simple question: 'What would Dumbledore do?'

Labels: TV

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  HD-DVD RIP

Dear Dave,

When I was small, my parents' TV had a remote control with a handful of buttons on it. You could turn the set on, select a channel (from a choice of three) and maybe even change the volume. It worked by sound rather than infra-red but it was probably pretty swish for the time. Pulling the curtains shut quickly did always switch the programme over to ITV, though. The remote apparently never functioned quite the same after I buried it in a bowl of washing powder, either. Oh, and we had to wedge a matchstick under the power switch on the set itself near the end. Still, getting to watch Button Moon was a simple affair: Turn on at exactly mid-day, insert matchstick, press button three. In the event of unwanted BBC news due to remote control failure, close curtains violently. Sit back and enjoy.

It was quite a contrast, yesterday, when Fraser rushed upstairs while I was giving the other two a bath and demanded to know how to pause Ben 10 so he could go to the toilet without missing anything. I suggested the old-fashioned method of waiting for the adverts and then making a mad scramble for the facilities. Unfortunately, he'd already wasted half the ad break coming to find me. I didn't want to leave the two younger ones alone in water, so I had to attempt to explain to Fraser what to do. This was tricky because the show was playing from the TiVo but he was watching it in the kitchen. The TiVo isn't in the kitchen. For the remote to work, he needed to turn on the video sender. Turning on the video sender was liable to switch the TV to the AV channel, though. This wasn't likely to go well.

The alternative was to fire up the TV in the lounge and control the TiVo locally. Except, of course, there was no guarantee that the lounge TV would be displaying the correct AV input. Also, the TiVo control in the lounge is kept out of the reach of children, so he'd need to fetch the one from the kitchen - if he could even be certain which was the TiVo remote from amongst the pile of five controls. More than that, we don't normally let the kids touch the TiVo remote in case they somehow delete things, so he would probably need to bring the remote to me, in order for me to show him which button was 'Pause'. Since he was unlikely to figure any of this out before the ads ended, I knew I would also have to teach him how to rewind. This was bound to go badly.

I told him to just go to the toilet and that I'd sort it out later.

Luckily, he had substantial business to attend to, so, before he was finished, I was able to safely nip down, turn on the video sender, rewind, pause and tell him how to get it going again. Phew!

Twenty minutes later, he came and found me to complain that the Wii wasn't working in the lounge. I realised the problem instantly. Since the video sender was on, the AV auto-switching was automatically disabled. He needed to switch the video sender off. He's not normally allowed to touch the video sender, however, because... Well, I don't know, he just isn't. I gave him precise instructions what to do. He came back and told me that the video sender had more buttons than I remembered.

I lost it a bit.

After I'd calmed down, I left Marie under a towel and went to check. Fraser turned out to be right. I switched the thing off, the Wii came on and Marie finally got dried. It was all a bit of a palaver.

Thinking about it later, I really shouldn't have got frustrated with Fraser. Babysitters frequently give up trying to get our AV equipment to show them anything other than blank screen, Mario or CSI. These tend to be what come up by default and viewing anything else can be fairly complicated. This is partly because we've got too many gadgets chained together but it's mainly because electronics these days can be very confusing.

Take our DVD player, for example. The remote control has forty-eight buttons. Most days, I get by with five of them. I normally only ever use sixteen of them. This means that two-thirds of the buttons I haven't touched since I was fiddling around with it on the day we bought it. (Actually, that's not entirely true - I have accidentally touched most of them a few times but I've always regretted it...)

I can only imagine that gadgets are designed by people who use short-cut keys. The kind of people who can press Control-Shift-#-K followed by Alt-Tab-Backspace-Q and then Escape-/-[-H and make their computer download The Matrix, burn it to DVD and print a label while they're still reading the online version of T3.

The average consumer doesn't use short-cut keys. I've been using computers for twenty-five years and I still save files by clicking on the menu. I was quite pleased with myself for utilising the 'Home' key the other day...

I like technology and I'm not stupid, so it makes me wonder how everyone else is getting on. How many buttons on their DVD remotes are they ignoring? Almost all of them, I suspect, and that's turned out to be very bad news for Toshiba.

Yes. HD-DVD is dead. Long live Blu-ray! The great high definition disc format war is over.

And do you know why? It's because modern TVs are too complicated for the assistants in electronics stores to operate.

Let me explain. HD-DVD had a head start and cheaper players so it really should have done better than it has. A million machines sold globally? That makes the Dreamcast look successful. The problem is, an HD-DVD player is pointless without a high definition television. So, before Toshiba could convince us to buy HD-DVD players, they had to convince us to buy HD-TVs.

That really hasn't gone hugely well. For a start, television technology has already changed a couple of times in the last decade, with both widescreen and integrated digital taking off. The kind of people who want a large TV have shelled out for one relatively recently and don't necessarily have space and cash for another. On top of that, there's not much high definition stuff to watch and most of what there is involves significant extra expense. HD-TVs aren't the obvious objects of desire that manufacturers thought they would be. We need them sold to us. Heck, it's only about five years since I was watching Buffy recorded Long Play onto VHS from a fuzzy aerial signal. That was good enough. Now I can watch Galactica on DVD in widescreen. It's like a cinema in my own home! How much difference can HD make?

Which is where those assistants come in. I should walk into the electronics section of a department store and be blown away by the clarity and resolution. For some reason, however, most places that sell HD-TVs don't seem to think it necessary to set up their display models properly or to feed them with an HD source. In fact, most of the sets usually look like they're showing something recorded on Long Play VHS. Considering a decent HD-TV costs two or three times what I paid for my pin-sharp 'normal' telly, this doesn't make for a hugely tempting purchase. And that's before getting into the nitty-gritty of contrast ratios, response times, pixel counts and AV sockets.

I barely go out, I'm a keen gamer and I watch DVDs all the time - I'm a prime target for being sold a high definition entertainment combo. Admittedly, I was never going to be in the first wave of those buying HD-TVs but, if I'd got one a year ago, I might well have also got the HD-DVD add-on for my Xbox 360. That I haven't got an HD-TV yet was always going to spell HD-DVD's doom.

Sony meanwhile (at great expense) has slipped Blu-ray into ten million homes via Trojan PS3s. Sure, PS3 games look better on an HD telly, but you don't need an HD-TV to give a PS3 purpose. Sony is hoping that, as people get round to buying new TVs, they'll discover the joys of the Blu-ray player that's already in their living rooms and start buying discs in a big way.

I'm not so sure that's going to happen, though. Just because HD-DVD has lost, doesn't mean Blu-ray has won. Not yet, anyway.

I'm curious as to how many people are playing Blu-ray movies on a standard TV via the composite AV output of their PS3 and are wondering what all the fuss is about. Word of mouth from that can't be good for future sales.


Even those who know what they're doing may not make Blu-ray the success which Sony hopes. Personally, when I do finally get an HD-TV, I'll almost certainly get a PS3 now because they're still relatively cheap as Blu-ray players and far more versatile. I'll even rent some Blu-ray discs. I'm not going to buy many, though. Replacing my DVD collection isn't worth the expense and DVDs are more useful anyway. We have at least nine devices in the house capable of playing DVDs. I can watch DVDs everywhere apart from in the shower. More importantly, I can sit the kids in front of a DVD anywhere, whether we're at home or not. I can't see Blu-ray replacing DVD. Yeah, it will be nice for a bit on the big telly in the lounge but I'll still be using DVDs most of the time, right up until digital downloads finally take over.

The only way Blu-ray will survive long term is if digital download devices remain a complicated faff to use. However, if Toshiba can quickly turn their resources to producing some really simple ones, they may have the last laugh yet. How simple? Well, let's just say that the testing should involve a harassed adult two floors away from the equipment relaying operating instructions to a seven-year-old who desperately needs the toilet. If the thing functions correctly without inducing frustration, sarcasm or warm dampness in any of the test subjects then they'll be onto a winner.

I'd be in the first wave for that.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: PS3, stuff, TV

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Special talents

Dear Dave,

There's some really scary stuff on TV these days. The news presents us with a hundred disasters from around the world which we can't fix, and blinds us to the difference we can make in our families and communities. Soap operas blur the boundary of fiction and reality by telling the stories of 'normal' people whose 'normal' lives involve rather a lot of lying, cheating and murder. And then there's the episode of Bob the Builder where Dizzy gets carried away and they all drown slowly in a vast pit of wet cement.

Actually, no, I just imagined that last one. ('Can we fix it? Yes we... glurk...')

I didn't imagine an episode of Clifford's Puppy Days I saw recently, though. The little red dog and his animal friends were organising some kind of party. (You can probably tell I was watching every detail intently). Each of them found a job to do that suited their special talent. For instance, the bird could fly up and hang the ceiling decorations. Clifford went around giving assistance but got a bit upset because he couldn't work out what his special talent was. He kept being reassured that he had one - he just had to discover it. In the end, everyone agreed that Clifford's talent was helping people. After all, everyone has something special they're good at.

Really?

Maybe all that was meant was that no one's rubbish at everything. It didn't come across that way, however. The implication was that everyone has a unique gift that marks them out. There's an episode of Tweenies that has an identical plot and message. (Jake's special talent turns out to be that he's the best at being an audience!)

As I see it, though, special talents aren't usually things that can just be discovered. Sure, everyone is better at some things than others, but to turn something that we're good at into something we have a real talent for takes work and dedication. I know a kid who wants to be a professional footballer. He's always been good at football but honing his talent involves training four days a week plus regular matches and he's been doing this for years.

He's ten.

That's a lot of commitment with no guarantees at the end.

Suggesting that we all, by rights, have something we're great at undervalues effort and is bound to lead to disappointment. We are not all born equal - unique and equally deserving of love, but not equal. We have different natural abilities and different opportunities. If we teach our children to derive their self-worth from what they are capable of doing compared to others, it's unlikely they will have a clear picture of themselves. It is up to them, with our help and encouragement, to make the most of their own circumstances but, even then, putting in effort doesn't necessarily lead to success.

Failure happens. I know I don't have to look far to see that. As a housedad, the day can bring all kinds of possibilities:

• A glorious visit to the swing park packed with fun and giggles.
• A roundabout disaster resulting in vomit and tears, followed by a walk home in the rain without waterproofs.
• Shouting and frustration.
• Cuddles and stories.
• Neverending Teletubbies and Play-Doh soiled socks.
• Homemade biscuits and sandcastles.
• Dozing beneath a blanket on the sofa with a sick child under my arm.

Some days go better than others for us all but our children are no less special on the difficult days and neither are we. Love them, cherish them and look after them. Their special talent is being them. Help them to make the most of it.

Oh, and tell them not to listen to Clifford. He and his friends have a special talent for talking nonsense. They've been practicing for years.

* * *

Moments from the last week when each of my children were themselves and made me smile:

• At school, Fraser had to pretend to be a Viking setting off to settle in a distant land and write about his experiences. As far as provisions were concerned he wrote the following:
  
  'I packed plenty of vegetables like sweetcorn and carrots but not potatoes because they're undiscovered yet.'


• Lewis appeared to be having a disagreement with his swimming instructor and I went over to intervene. He was wearing armbands made of green foam and she wanted him to put on orange ones. She explained to me that the orange ones were much less bouyant and he didn't need the green ones anymore. I explained that Lewis really, really likes green.
  
  Somehow I had to persuade him to swap. "Put the orange ones on instead, Lewis."
  
  He wasn't having any of it. "I want to wear the green ones."
  
  "The orange ones will help you learn to swim better," I coaxed.
  
  "Why?"
  
  The obvious answer was 'because they'll make you sink'. Luckily, I have a fair amount of experience with this whole dad thing now and I chose my words carefully. "Because they're made of different stuff."
  
  "Oh, OK," he said and swapped them over excitedly.
  
  The mind of a five-year-old is a truly peculiar place.


• I was hurrying Marie up to her bath and she screamed and shouted, "You don't chase me! You don't chase me!"
  
  "OK," I said, trying to quell her panic. "I won't chase you."
  
  "Good," she said. "We just be friends, OK?"
  
  "All right," I said, nodding.
  
  Then, suddenly all smiles, she reached out and led me hand-in-hand up the stairs, laughing to herself. It was unexpected and lovely.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, depression, housedad, TV

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  The battle for the remote control

Dear Dave,

Following on from our recent correspondence about the effects of kids' TV, I have a confession to make. I have to admit that Marie is addicted to Numberjacks. Just as I can't function in the morning without my cup of coffee, she needs her fix of single-digit superheroes.

In case you haven't seen it, it's a mixture of CGI and live-action, involving the numbers zero to nine living in a sofa and being teleported out to help people who are experiencing maths related problems created by villains such as the Puzzler, the Numbertaker and Spooky Spoon. It sounds weird but the reality is pretty straightforward. The characters look like numbers and they're named after numbers so kids learn to recognise numbers. (If you want weird then check out In the Night Garden which is also on CBeebies - that's weirder than discovering your eyebrows have turned purple or than finding a tube of toothpaste embedded in your cheese. Lewis was watching it the other day and asked me, "Why did Upsy Daisy kiss the Ninky Nonk?" I honestly answered that I had absolutely no idea).

Anyway, if Marie doesn't get Numberjacks at regular intervals then she starts to get grumpy and uncooperative. Leave her too long and there's anger and tears. Eventually she turns into a quivering, whimpering wreck. Flick on the TiVo, however, and it's instant smiles and little squeals of relief. Then her eyes glaze over and she stares in rapt attention for twelve or so minutes until the episode finishes and she demands another one.

The boys were the same when they were younger. We ended up watching the Scooby Doo movie two or three times a day for a month at one point. I wasn't complaining, though, because (a) it has Sarah Michelle Gellar in it and (b) it kept them occupied for quite a while. Having to start up five episodes an hour is more of a chore while constantly reminding me how little 'real' parenting I'm doing. On top of that, she's not always entirely sure what's fact or fiction. She knows numberjacks are only 'in the telly' but if snot starts dripping out her nose then she's convinced it's the Problem Blob's fault. She was scared to go to bed last week because she thought the Shape Japer was waiting in her room. ("He bad! I not want light off!")

This leaves me with a dilemma. Which makes me a worse parent - letting her watch and risk her living in fear that an animated miscreant is going to turn her into a triangle, or not letting her watch and risk her being so miserable that she makes herself vomit? I'm not sure of the answer. On a practical level, however, not having to clean up sick always makes a course of action more attractive.

I had been quite smug about controlling my childrens' viewing up to this point. Our TV set up is so complicated they can't change the channel themselves and so I have control. As what they watch is limited to start with, I've only had to put a stop to a few things on Cartoon Network. There hasn't been much conflict.

On the occasions when I've discussed censorship with other parents, it's usually computer games we've talked about. On the one hand, there are people who don't realise how much games have progressed since the days of Pac-Man and don't realise just how unsuitable some of them are for children. On the other, sensationalist news coverage singles out violent games above any other medium as the root of all kinds of evil. As a keen gamer myself I've tried to point out the middle ground. Games have age ratings on them just like films. These are suitability ratings based on content such as sex and swearing. (I've overheard confused parents in shops think they were difficulty ratings. '3+' means it doesn't have nudity or terrifying brain-eating, chainsaw-wielding zombies; it doesn't mean a toddler will be able to play it).

Obviously, there's room for some parental discretion. In my household I do the games buying and it shouldn't be too hard working out what's suitable for my kids' ages and maturity as they grow older. I've already had to stop Fraser from playing Paper Mario 2 - he's good at the fights but for me to sit there for thirty hours reading the text wouldn't be fair on my other kids. He wasn't happy but we got through it. Am I going to stop him playing Grand Theft Auto until he's eighteen, when, here in Scotland, he could get married without my permission at sixteen? I don't know. Still, armed with reviews and my own gaming experience, I should be able to make a decision and argue my case.

As I said, I was smug. Then some thoughts crossed my mind. Forty TV channels enter my house but all I watch is Dr Who, 24 and three flavours of CSI. I can't remember the last non-animated film I saw at the cinema. My CD collection stops at 1997. My video rental card has bio-degraded. The library thinks I'm dead. There are... Oh...

One day they're going to figure out how to work the TiVo remote. I can't maintain control forever. Let's face it, I'll have little idea what my kids are listening to, watching or reading. They'll probably have unsuitable friends as well. Games are only a small part of what they will be exposed to. Every practical detail of drug use and benefit fraud I picked up as a teenager, I gathered from my parents' Daily Mail and from News at Ten (thanks, Trev!). Most episodes of EastEnders portray more lying and cheating than any game I've ever played. For every book full of enlightenment, there are three biographies of footballers. Shielding children and teens from difficult issues is impossible without solitary confinement. It won't make good kids anyway, just ignorant ones.

I guess, in some ways, our job is going to get harder as our children get older. Difficult issues should be a regular part of conversation. We need to talk honestly and openly to our children about everything - sex, death, violence, drugs, sexuality, God, relationships, anger, money, failure, love, forgiveness, everything. We need to listen to them and discuss these issues. In short, we need to fill them full of real sense so that the nonsense can't take hold.

Which is easier said than done...

Marie's still allowed to watch Numberjacks but we had to talk to her about it and convince her everything's OK. We reasoned with her as best we could but played along a little as well - we told her the Shape Japer had gone far away on a train. This cheered her up a lot. "He lost in tunnel," she said and went to bed. Crisis averted for now.

It's a start, I suppose.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, computer games, parenthacks, TV

  11:10 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Teletubbies save the world

Dear Dave,

I'm sorry to hear that the teletubbies are destroying your sanity. I remember when Fraser was young and I happily got to watch re-runs of ER all day mixed in with Working Lunch and an occasional documentary about Alexander the Great or quantum mechanics. Then he got a bit older and emergency chest surgery ceased to be suitable background noise for playtime. Not long after that, he realised that I had Dipsy and co. held captive within black rectangles of plastic and could make them perform at any time simply by feeding them to the video machine. Overnight I went from learning about the fundamental properties of matter to watching a teddy-bear tap-dance. On loop.

When we were children, television didn't start until nine in the morning, there were only three channels and kids' TV was restricted to lunchtime, teatime and Saturday mornings. This was obviously to the benefit of parents, giving them peace to get meals ready during the week and to pretend to be sleeping at the weekend. Now television never stops, there are dozens of channels and kids' TV is only ever moments away.

That's not to say that my children watch more television than I did as a child, it's just most of what I watched ranged from desperate, e.g. the testcard, to astonishingly inappropriate, e.g. an Open University lecture on human biology. The problem isn't too much TV, it's that control has been given to the child. By the power of CBeebies, there's no reason for them to put up with boring adult telly. By the power of rewind, there's no reason for them to stay glued to the set and not go disturbing 'sleeping' adults.

Deprived of both sex and TV, adults are bound to go slightly crazy. Add to this being constantly bombarded with The Fimbles, Tweenies and Fireman Sam, and hallucinations are almost a given. I've found myself imagining episodes of CSI: Balamory ("We made casts of the tyre impressions on Archie's head and I have to say it's not looking good for you, Penny."), Dr Who in Toy Town ("They've exterminated Big Ears!") and Jack Bauer the Builder ("Tell me where the hammer is, Spud. Tell me now and I won't have to hurt you..."). Then there's the episode of Come Outside where Auntie Mabel, the middle-aged spinster, does a musical number about sewage. (No, hang on, that really happened).

Maybe I should just throw the TV out the window like Super~Mum says...

No, actually that's a little drastic. TV gives kids some of their social identity. I know this because I spent a year in the States as a teenager. There were many occasions when I felt far away from home but the one that sticks in my head was sitting around in History class discussing shows we'd loved as kids. I'd never seen Sesame Street and never cared about Mickey Mouse. They'd never heard of Mr Benn. They were all able to share together and forget their differences. It was as if they were four again. I, however, was more different than before. There was a new cultural barrier between us.

On the flipside, it turned out that the cutest girl in class had spent a few of her younger years in Britain. We paired off and reminisced about the episode of Bagpuss with the chocolate biscuit machine. We bonded. Shared memories of kids' TV brought friendship and snogging. Kids' TV is good.

Thanks to this experience, I believe that the Teletubbies are in fact the best hope we have for world peace. I know you hate them now but Sam will soon find something else to be fixated on. You will move on to Tikkabilla. The Teletubbies, however, will continue to be shown all over the world. By adding localised film-clips they can infiltrate any nation. There are so many episodes that they will pad out daytime telly forever. No child will entirely escape. Eventually these children, our children, will grow up and be in charge.

I imagine a point in the future when the world is edging towards war and the General Assembly of the United Nations meets for one last attempt to avert disaster. No common ground can be found, however. Voices rise. Fingers move edgily towards buttons. Suddenly Nicole Kidman realises the only way to save the day. She races up to the control booth and switches on BBC7. CBeebies radio blares out over the public address system.

"Who spilled the tubby custard?" says a well-spoken, male voice and hundreds of interpreters babble out translations.

There is a pause. Then, as one, the ambassadors of the world respond in their native tongues but there is no need to translate. Creed and colour no longer matter. For once, each person understands their brothers and sisters around them with perfect clarity. United, the people of Earth cry out, "It was Po! Po spilled the tubby custard."

Then they give each other a big hug.

From that single moment of shared identity will come new hope. Everybody will have their turn to wear the skirt and there will be tubby toast for everyone...

Or maybe I'm being too much of an optimist. Feel free to fall back on Plan B:


There was the sound of an approaching scooter and Ed waited patiently for his next victim. The Teletubby infestation would soon be dealt with...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, favourite, TV

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