Amazingly I've not blogged about children's TV before. Remarkable really when you consider it's pretty much all I watch nowadays. By the time the boy has gone to bed and we've prepared, eaten and cleared up after dinner I'm too tired to watch anything that requires more than a modicum of brain power so I tend to just go to sleep. Or bugger about on Twitter. Either way I can't follow anything that requires me to think.
To be fair I've never had the patience for plot, so long films and 8 part dramas were never my thing. It's lazy of me I know, but I quite literally can't be arsed.
Maybe that's why I love CBeebies. Nothing's longer than 25 minutes tops and most shows are about 10. This is obviously meant to appeal to the short attention span of the average toddler but it's perfect for me too. Lemon Cake Lady says I have the brain of a four year old boy, certainly I have the same sense of humour, so she may well be right.
Remembering the childhood TV programmes of my era, they were an odd mix. We look back fondly at children's TV from the 70's and 80's and berate todays offerings as rubbish, but there are many similarities. You've only got to think about the iconic and seemingly drug fuelled "Magic Roundabout" and then look at current hippie yoga inspired "Waybuloo's" to realise very little changes.
They messed about with "Waybuloo" once. Never again. There was a national outcry. They used the voice over man from "Come Dine With Me" and apparently toddlers were screaming, crying and hiding behind the sofa for hours afterwards. They shelved the rest of the entire series after only one episode. They've never been shown.
That's the power of children's TV. Or more importantly the power TV has over children and the power children have over TV!
Along with "Waybuloo", another permanent fixture of the CBeebies bedtime hour is "In The Night Garden' - if you thought you'd taken LSD with "Waybuloo" you're in for the acid trip of a lifetime with this one!
For a start nothing is to scale! One minute the teeny, tiny Pontipine family and their next door neighbours The Wottingers, (who I can only assume are part of the witness protection scheme they come out of their house so rarely), are bigger than the Ninky Nonk and the Pinky Ponk (are you keeping up there at the back?), then the next minute the much larger characters of that hussy Upsy Daisy and those flashers who permanently lose their trousers (yeah that old story - sorry officer I lost my trousers) The Tomliboos are having a ride on them.
If that not enough to do your head in after a day with a pre-schooler take a look at the hero of the piece, one Mr Iggle Piggle. Remind you of anyone?
Look at that face. He's the spit of someone isn't he....
Get that pint drunk or Makka Pakka's OCD will go into overdrive and he'll have cleaned your glass before you can say " Same again please Upsy Daisy you saucy wench and how about pulling that cord that makes your skirt go up and shows off your knickers for the lads? Oh and I appear to have left my kids in the pub toilet.. ah well never mind."
You never see them in the same room do you and now you know why.
Then there's Balamory! What's the Story in Balamory? I don't know about the story but I know if you ply Lemon Cake Lady with enough Aspall's cider she's sing you the dirty words to PC Plum's song she made up.
It's starts,
"I'm PC Plum and I take it up the bum..." and basically goes down hill from there. Mind you I can talk as I find myself singing under my breath...
"Tree Fu Tom. Likes it up his bum.."
Never mind not letting children watch too much kids TV, it's has a funny affect on the adults too. And I haven't even started on Mr Tumble.....
Bedtime hour!!! It's enough to give you nightmares.....
Home is a bit testing at the moment.
Hubby has to be away quite a bit for his work.
We are having building work done.
Oscar the cat has decided to start marking his territory in the house because another cat, known by us as Bob (her real name is Fluffy she doesn't look like a Fluffy, she's Bob - short for Kate) , has decided to adopt us and virtually lives outside on our windowsill.
This means that right by the window, underneath the desk where I sit and work, write blogs, do social media and generally bugger about on the computer, it stinks of piss. Actual piss. Cat piss. Which stinks!
And the boy refuses to use the potty. He just holds the wee/poo in and screams for a nappy on until I can take no more and have to give in because quite frankly I think he's uncomfortable and in pain bless him.
I've got one that won't wee and one that won't stop!
You can see why I'm a bit fraught at present.
So the other day hubby was away and I was bathing the boy.
Before his bath I asked him if he needed to go and use the potty.
"No, I want a nappy on." was his reply.
I've heard it all before and I thought, he's now having a bath I'm not putting a nappy on, so I ploughed on.
Big mistake!
We have a downstairs bathroom with a small lobby between that and the kitchen, then the dining room is beyond that. You can stand in my dining room and see right through quite clearly to the bath, so after washing the boys hair etc I set the timer on the microwave for 5 more minutes playing and went to the dining room to fold washing.
I'd been folding away for no more than a couple of minutes when the boy shot up and in a startled voice cried out,
"Mummy, I want to get out. I want to get out!"
"But you've got a few minutes left to play darling if you want."
"NO! I WANT TO GET OUT"
The boy then started lobbing handfuls of something out of the water.
I rushed into the bathroom and the sight that greeted me was like the Battle of the Somme,
"What's that on the floor?" I thought. Oh god Oscar's not had a crap in the bathroom has he? No, it's everywhere (and I mean everywhere), maybe the cat's been sick. But he can't have been, he's upstairs and anyway I've been watching the whole time.
Bear in mind this all went through my head in a split second and with no great cohesion because the boy was howling and scooping up armfuls of dirty water and poo and throwing them out of the bath and onto the bathroom floor.
Tiles, bath mat, towels, floor, the pedestal on the sink, bath toys and the boy himself were all covered in shit.
Actual shit!
Not just a poo in the bath you can scoop up with a jug and flush away in one swift and solid movement.
Oh no. The boy had, had a poo-naumi on a epic scale.
This thing was so wide spread it had its own postcode.
Poor little fella looked like he'd been bathing in it for hours not just 30 seconds or so. New Lynx Poo for Men - guaranteed to repel yucky girls and traumatise your mother.
It was all over his body, in his hair, on his face, in truth it was as if the last 15 minutes of bath time had never happened. Poor little fella was frightened so I had to keep as calm as I could whilst saying over and over again,
"Don't put your fingers in your mouth, don't put your fingers in your mouth."
You know sometimes when you're faced with a situation that involves a load of mess and you just don't know where to start? That's how I felt.
Do I lift the hysterical boy out of the shit infested water onto a floor covered in shit infested water and then clean it all up at the end?
Or do I wipe the floor of it's shit infested water first, hose him down with the shower then lift him out, effectively cleaning the shit infested water up as I go?
Or do I run about in a panic, crying and screaming,
"Everything's covered in shit, everything's covered in shit!!"
I think I did the middle one and tried to clean the boy, the bathroom and poor old Raa Raa the Noisy Lion bath toy who'd copped it, as we went along.
In my head I was doing the crying and screaming option, right up until after everything and everyone had been scrubbed down within an inch of their lives, bath toys were in a bucket of disinfectant and the bath was full of dettol and boiling hot water.
I was still inwardly crying and screaming as the now clean boy snuggled next to me with his milk and stories and even later on in the evening when I poured a glass of wine and shuddered at what had happened.
Don't get me wrong. I can clean up shit. I can clean up shit with the best of them. Shit I can do.
But you've heard the expression "A shower of shit!" - well that's nothing compared to bathtub full of the stuff.
I have been neglecting you.
I'm very sorry. I truly am.
I love my blog very much but at the end of the day I'm just too bushed to write anymore stuff.
You see my writing business seems to be really flourishing.
I'm busy.
Proper busy!
Last night in bed, just before we went to sleep hubby asked me what I had on work wise tomorrow,
"I'm pitching to new client at 10, then I'm writing up a proposal for another client, before I go to meet my web designer at 12.30 about copy for two other mutual clients of ours.'
Hubby feel silent for a few moments.
"Christ!" he exclaimed "That's like proper grown up shit."
Whether the shit is bull or otherwise I'm not sure, but after I'd said it I have to admit I did think, oh blimey that does sound rather good. I'll be applying for The Apprentice next and declaring myself Project Manager at every available opportunity. Then I realised it made me sound a bit of a knob so I shut up.
All this seems a million miles away from years of trying to make my colleagues laugh, by buggering about doing pretend weather forecasts at the big map of the world on the wall behind the printer, and randomly surprising them with e-mails with pictures of bits of raw meat attached to them.
Can you tell my heart wasn't really in it?
Of course now if I don't work I don't get paid and you'd be amazed what a motivational tool that is. In my old job, my motivational tool was a picture of a giant cock and balls I'd drawn on a post it note, which I used to pass to Ken when she was on the phone to a customer to put her off.
Tool. Get it?
Christ I was desperate wasn't I!
But don't think for one moment I have turned into a ball breaking, career bitch, with sky high heels, shoulder pads and a "can do" attitude, girlfriend. (I really can't pull that girlfriend thing off can I).
No, I still stumble about, running 10 minutes late for everything, slobbing about in jeans that are too big round the bum and need hoiking up every 10 seconds and worst and most unprofessional of all, needing to wee the moment I arrive anywhere!
Working from home can be a lonely existence so going out to meet clients, either at their offices, or for a very civilised beverage in a coffee shop, is great.
But try as I might, even if I go before I leave, or don't drink anything an hour before the meeting, it doesn't make any difference, the first thing I say to any new prospective client is,
"Pleased to meet you. Do you mind if I use your loo?"
Hardly gives the impression of a together business women does it, walking in with my legs crossed and a pained expression on my face.
Then of course some of these offices are quite small. The loo is just off where the meeting is going to be. Not only have I just dashed in and demanded to use their facilities before I've even taken my coat off, but now I have to suffer the indignity of them being able to hear me peeing like a racehorse.
It could be nerves. It could be habit. It could, and more likely, be that, since having the boy my bladder has taken on the capacity of a small child and the liquid retaining qualities of a sieve.
It's hard to know what it is, but I'm pretty sure Karen Brady doesn't rush into the boardroom of a morning and the first thing she says is,
"I'm just going for a slash Lord Sugar. Don't fire anyone until I get back.'
I may have abandoned my old jokey office ways but even with the new professional business woman me, there still always a whiff of taking the piss wherever I go!
