Perfect programming

Smug parenting. Oh yes. How I despise those who drive their kids to school and give the reason not as:

It's too far
or
We're too lazy

but for the following self satisfied reason:

Because they "love their children too much" and they can't bear the thought of anything bad happening to them so they have to take them right to the school gates.

Uh huh. And that can't be done on foot because...?

Smug. I told you.

And smug it is when parents sniffily state that their children's precious eyes are never tainted by viewing - shock - television, whilst muttering about other, lesser, parents using the television as a "babysitter".

Smugly, I conclude that the reports indicating any damage caused to children is referring to garish, loud, unsuitable tv. Or tv being prioritised above things that children just do, like run around. Not saintly CBeebies, for the amount of time before some guff like Mama Mirabelle comes on.

CBeebies can be quite wonderful, and I can credit it with my (genius) children learning the following:

Shapes
Colours
Numbers

Which is no bad thing. Ok, so I reinforce it forcibly, but how marvellous to have initial ideas placed in their minds in a colourful and cheerful manner. I have waxed lyrical before about the greatness of CBeebies. But there's news!!

Conveniently, for we are at the perpetual questioning stage of "what does *** start with mummy?" while nursery intros their names and what they start with, CBeebies has a new programme entitled Alphablocks.

Oh my.

There are - spookily - 26 characters, each a letter of the alphabet. They hold hands to form sounds and words and are animated charmingly. Each speaks in a manner to most emphasise their letter sound; they have stories whereby they try and solve a problem by linking up to each other to form words until they find the word that solves the problem.

They make more sense than that and form a quite wonderful introduction to letters and words, where I had failed to get across any more than the names of the letters.

There is much cuteness. Q is portrayed as a mad woman constantly pursuing U. T is a doddery old man who loves tea. X is an "exciting" superhero who writes an x in the air with a "cks cks" sound. O is overexcitable and says "oh!" a lot. C is annoyed by K for stealing her sound. And so on.

I love this. It's brilliant. Click the pic, excuse the twee titles, and see for yourself:





As to the "babysitting" element? You have to watch with the kids - which is why this house no longer shows In the Night Garden - or they'll know more than you. When demanded to make something, you had better remember how Mister Maker did it...

Confuseder

Confused part 2: email

Disclaimer: this does not refer to anyone specific or any emails received or sent, I'm having a ponder.

Email has the most extraordinary capacity to confuse. (As does postal mail, but who gets that any more? Not I , said she, lyingly) Amazon just recommended a DVD that is now unavailable. How incredibly useful. Plough through the tedious "buy your Christmas presents from us! It's so great!" and then see what's left. Not a lot usually, but it's terribly nicely organised with filters and labels and all.

The ignored are still ignoring back (better go to facebook and send some plants), the unignored strangely feeling ignored and the lost remain lost.

I don't understand the etiquette of email. For one, when you do a semi-formal email, it looks really silly if you use "Dear Sir" and "yours faithfully" but if you don't, then is that not rude? Is it rude to do formal things by email at all? But things like job applications are often asked for by email, so it is necessary. Most people seem to do "Hi NAME" and sign off with "regards", but you can guarantee if you choose "regards" you'll get a reply that says "kind regards" and you immediately feel bad for not being kind.

And what about the reply bit, it gets a bit silly when you are thanking someone for thanking you for thanking them for thanking you for thanking them for doing something good/nice/useful, but at what point is it ok to not say "thank you for replying to my email"? I'm sure we didn't used to do that with letters, I definitely don't remember doing "thank you for your thank you card" cards.

Noone seems to feel happy with the number of emails they receive from someone. The person I email most seems to feel neglected half the time, yet all the people I don't speak to much feel much more rightly neglected, while I feel if they wanted to, they could get in touch too. And the poor people I neglect to neglect are probably sick of seeing my name in their inbox. There should be some sort of mechanism for knowing who wants to hear from you, but then again, that would probably be EXTREMELY embarrassing.

Oh, if only we all wrote letters like we used to. Once a year, same people, same words. Easy.