This post is in response to George Hogg’s intriguing post over the pains of Mr Benn, who never really did much… I suffer similar distresses when contemplating one of my favourite children’s TV shows – the weird, the wacky RAINBOW! It was brilliant, but VERY odd. You get Geoffrey, your average mid-forties London punter, who happens to live with a large camp bear, an effeminate male pink hippo called George and a strange, very naughty ‘I don’t know what’ called Zippy who likes eating sausages! They live in a house together that appears to be one room with cupboards for bedrooms.

The show is laden with innuendo, (particularly on the accidental release of the BBC Christmas special for the staff party – not for the faint-hearted!!) and highly suspect. I mean, what is the deal with “Rod Jane and Freddy” who live next door?? (They used to be Rod, Jane and Matthew, before Matthew left to live with a silent magic bear, a fussy panda and a squeaky dog!!) They were allegedly strolling minstrels who would come round every now and again to sing a song and play their instruments together, but what were they really? I was never convinced.

If you look at Zippy and George, you will notice that they only have one ‘hand’, as they are actually played by the same man. Tres etrange…

Was Geoffrey on the dole?? He never went to work, just like Mr Benn, and Bungle, Zippy and George didn’t go to school. How old were they supposed to be anyway? I am not surprised that Geoffrey is now a London cab driver, as he must’ve been a bit of a waster really – sitting at home and reading strange stories to an martian, a hippo and a bear! I expect he was picked up by the doctors eventually…

It is with great sadness that I must report the untimely death of Claud-Phillippe, the lonely angel fish… For the last few days he has been cruising rather slowly around the tank looking a bit bloated, like he was suffering from bad gas. Today I was devastated to find him lying under the bridge, motionless and white instead of multi-coloured (actually he is still there as I am too scared to fish him out!! JT has to do dead fish!) I hope that he hasn’t been eaten by the three shrimps that live under the bridge.

We conclude that he must have gorged himself on the two feeding blocks that we put in whilst we were away. I am slightly concerned that Noah the mutant cat fish (yes, still growing!) sticks his whole mouth round what is left of the feeding block and gnashes away at it – I think he may grow EVEN BIGGER!!! :-S RIP Claud-Phillippe…

Congratulations to some good friends, Colin and Eleanor Crawford who have just become the proud parents of a beautiful little baby girl called Olivia! All the best to you all, I’m sure she will be a technostalgic, piano tuning literary genius!! To everyone else reading this blog, I heartily recommend Colin’s album (“Technostalgia” by Sundae Club – buy it here)it is regularly on our stereo and is a chilled mix of ancient synthesizers! Lemon Jelly meets Royksopp, whilst chatting to Massive Attack over a cup of tea with surreality (a new word…)

Sniff! It is with great sadness that in the next few days we will wave goodbye to the Corolla GTI which has served us faithfully for many a moon… We sold it on eBay which was a winner Some Mancunian scally will be along in the next two days to collect it – I’m glad he hasn’t already as we tried to retrieve it from Brooklyn Toyota today and the battery is as flat as a pancake! A mighty 2.9V left! Hmmmm…

We have also recently acquired a £50 Toyota Carina estate car which will be fixed up and on the market soon if you know anyone who wants one?!? It won’t be £50 as we need to spend some cash on new brake pipes but it will still be a bargain. Bit of a dang in the bonnet and slightly broken grill, but otherwise in VGC.

Anyway, fairwell faithful Corolla, may you RUST IN PEACE(S!)… xx

This is a short message to announce the launch of Pink Candy Badges, the first sister company of Elevation Multimedia. If you know of anyone who needs 25mm button badges for a conference or event, then do direct them here The site is still in slightly constructive stages, so may be a little edgy in places!

…Quaint little villages here and there…

Well we have just returned from a visit to Taunton and the shingly beaches of South Devon. It was a nice break but not exactly bikini weather!! Ah well… Nice to get away. We still have a luxurious few days to enjoy together before the world of work comes back with a CLANG! *insert miscellaneous comedy sound effect* It is quite scary to think that I have less than two weeks left in work

Today we went to Newton Abbott to see JT’s sister Heather – it is really nice to have a sister-in-law, as I don’t have an actual sister. She is really lovely and married to a top bloke called Justin. They have two mad Staffordshire Bull Terriers called Cracker and Boss Heather studied Fashion Design at the same place that I will be studying in September! Sadly she is unable to make the amazing wedding dresses and jewellery that she used to make as she suffered an awful brain tumour, but she is doing so well and is a real inspiration to anyone who struggles with illness.

We are off on our holidays for a week now… Very excited!! We’re going to stay with my Gran in Taunton for a few days (good access to Devon, free accomodation ), then we’re off to Newton Abbott to see JT’s sister Heather We may go to Cornwall for a night if we’re feeling adventurous too, it is a proper “spontaneous holiday” – much needed… See you in a week!!

xxx

Have you ever had a day of low spirits where all you need is a good laugh? I have just come out of a staff meeting with tears rolling down my cheeks after reminiscing over various classics, which I hope you will find amusing too…

The first memory occurred the night before my TT group were supposed to be off to Brazil, headed by Steve Clarke and Ruth Britten. Late that night Steve received a phonecall from Roo. Given that it was very late, he thought that it must be quite important. Roo was in a bit of a state telling Steve that she couldn’t come to Brazil. At first Steve was in shock/panic and then became more and more confused. It was only when he heard Ean (Roo’s husband) say “Are you alright babe?” and Roo squealing in horror, that he realised that she must be asleep!! Ean takes the phone and says “Alright mate?” and explains the situation away. What is possibly more funny is that we had just had the Noise and the reason Roo ‘couldn’t’ come to Brazil was that she was packing up all the badges from the Noise and someone was shouting at her because they were dirty and she had to clean them!! Of course there was no way that she was going to be able to make it!

We then got on to predictive text and the disasters that lie within…

Lou received a lovely message from a friend that ended with “sweat dreams” instead of “sweet dreams”, I managed to say “hour of love” to Helen instead of “lots of love” and then remembered THE most disasterous text that I have ever sent which went something like this:

“Hi m8 how are you? Have you had a good evening? I have had a nice evening, I helped bonk a Mexican for my friend’s 27th” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say I had meant to write “cook” but for whatever reason my phone had changed it and it all went horribly wrong.

Steve topped off the conversation with an excerpt from the talcum powder poll… He had asked Mike Smith if he uses talcum powder on his boys (meaning, his two sons), but Mike misheard him and I think almost fainted at the implications!! His face was a picture, not quite knowing whether or not to believe that Steve had just asked such a personal question in front of a serious looking Melody!! Ahhhhh….

I was clearing my files at work and found the following…!!

Do you ever get that weird experience where you were quite contentedly wandering round a shop lost in your own little world, when suddenly the ‘background radio’ comes hurtling into your sub-conscience as some controversial phrase pops out? This wqas what happened to me yesterday and I was so surprised that I can’t even remember where I was at the time!

Some local professor is now encouraging Gloucestershire parents to lie to their kids (white lies) because apparently it is an excellent way to stimulate their imagination. I have to say that I have not heard anything quite so disturbing in the last few days at least. Firstly let’s look at this notion of a white lie… A white lie is still a lie. Who are you kidding with that apart from yourself? It is no more than a pathetic remedy for the troubled conscience.

So what is wrong with lying to kids? (There’s a funny book called “Great lies to tell small children”, but that’s an aside!!) The Bible says many times that we shouldn’t lie including in Colossians 3…”Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of God.” That’s fairly clear. Firstly I am concerned that children are allegedly so void of imaginative skills when children are arguably THE most imaginative beings on this earth! It seems that after a few years, all sense of imagination is rationalised and beaten out of you by human theory and explanation . Sometimes in the church we become guilty of becoming too “theologised” (a new word?!) and we limit the inexplicable power of God (well, God’s power is limitless, so perhaps I should say we doubt it!) because we just explain away the childlike faith that Jesus wants us to have.

God in His very nature is not supposed to be rationalised because He is completely unique and His actions and timings are outside of our human comprehension!! He gave us imagination to give us a hope of getting close to what He is and what He can do – we just have to get past the mis-translation of “imagination” as just something that is not real. It also means “The ability to confront and deal with reality by using the creative power of the mind; resourcefulness” (i.e. ‘handling a problem with great imagination’). God can speak to our imaginations and it is real.

Then, coming back to children, I remembered. They are not really allowed to imagine anymore. They are not encouraged to read (try getting a teenager to read the Bible!!), not encouraged to be creative and make things for themselves in a resourceful way. They are not taught to cook, they do not know how to dream up ideas because education is given on a plate and even if they did have a good idea, there are so many preventative laws and health and safety issues, that they could never be done!

Also there is a huge issue here with trust. Most kids are sadly taught not to trust anyone. In some ways this is right, as unless you are Jesus, you are going to let someone down at numerous points in your life. To truly trust someone you’d hope they they would not let you down. However, Jesus taught grace and God entrusts things to us knowing full well taht we will stuff them up. But He still chooses to trust us. Are we too ‘trust-protective’ as a nation? How is it going to help if we lie to our children and then when they find out, tell them that it was ok and that it was good for them? If you can’t trust your parents, it can be an issue of huge insecurity. Imagine where we’d be if we coudn’t trust God!

Anyway, my rant draws to a close… I would maintain that it is not ok to lie to children. What do you think? A lie to me, s like a zit… It grows out of proportion, hurts, disfigures and eventually explodes!