« Here begins the longest month of my life.... | Main | Bang! »
June 13, 2006
Watching (and learning) with mother...
Peppa Pig 8.20 this morning on Channel Five. An episode entitled, ’Mummy Pig at Work’.
It begins with Daddy Pig and Peppa and George cooking dinner in the kitchen.
’Can we go and see Mummy Pig?’ the kids ask.
‘OK but only quickly,’ says Daddy Pig ‘because she is working.’
I’m so excited about the prospect of reversed gender roles on kids' TV so early in the morning that it doesn’t yet occur to me that he should have just said, ‘No!’
Mummy is in her study, she is writing what appears to be a letter. I infer from this that she has already written (and edited) her novel and is now constructing her covering letter. We watch this programme every day mind you, and I’ve never seen her work before but I assume she does it when the kids have gone to bed. Wow maybe they actually go to bed ON TIME, now that is impressive.
‘Mummy can we watch you work?’ beg Peppa and George.
‘Yes of course,’ she replies a little too patiently, ‘but you must be quiet because Mummy is working.’
They sit.
‘Look!’ I say, ‘Those kids can be quiet when their Mummy is working!’
‘Mummy, can we sit on your lap?’ ask Peppa and George.
‘Yes,’ she says ‘as long as you are quiet because Mummy is working.’
‘Look Mummy!’ Declares my daughter with astonishment, ‘Peppa Pig’s Mummy can type with TWO children on her lap and she hasn’t shouted at them yet.’
‘Hurrupmph.’ I reply.
Peppa and George kick off again. ‘Mummy can we play our computer games?’
I’m beginning to get slightly irritated with the little brats.
‘No you can’t,’ I shout at the telly, ‘can’t you see your Mummy is working? Haven’t you got some homework to do or something?’
‘I’ve nearly finished,’ says Mummy Pig, ‘then you can play your computer games.’ Maybe I too would have that same air of calm if I ever was in the state of nearly finished.
George starts tapping away on the keyboard, I’m not sure what he is pressing but it seems to be flickering between Mummy’s work and the Desktop page.
‘RIGHT THAT’S IT! GET TO YOUR ROOM NOW!’ I scream at the cartoon character.
‘Don’t do that George!’ says Mummy Pig in that serene way.
‘Yeah George, don’t do that.’ says Peppa whacking the keyboard and therefore sending the whole thing into crash mode.
‘DADDY PIG!’ Shouts Mummy Pig (that’s it, I think, get him to come up and give those kids some discipline, send them to bed with no dinner, ground them, ban sweets for the rest of the week, something?) ‘Can you come and fix the computer please?’
....
What? Hang on a sec... those brats lost your work and you are letting them get away with it?
Daddy Pig appears and here comes the best line of the whole show.... wait for it.
....
‘Daddy Pig, can you fix the computer? I’ll go and cook dinner.’
But he was supposed to be cooking dinner and looking after the kids, so you could get some work done and he has failed miserably at both. I’ve got one word for you Mummy Pig, D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
Daddy Pig fixes the computer, or rather he turns it off (hang on wasn’t it already off? Let’s get some continuity together here) and then back on again.
The kids say, ‘Can we play computer games? Mummy said we could.’
That is a lie. She said they could after her work, she didn’t finish because the brats made the computer crash, therefore they CAN'T play their games.
‘Of course you can.’ Daddy Pig says and then promptly sits with them playing this game that seems only to consist of hatching chickens from eggs. They all fall about laughing because obviously, it is so much fun.
Meanwhile Mummy Pig is downstairs cooking that dinner that Daddy was supposed to be doing. She hears the noise from upstairs and in one moment of relief I think she looks really pissed off, and then I realise that it’s a cartoon and they don’t actually have a whole gallery of faces to choose from, she is actually just a little bit confused.
‘What’s that noise?’ she asks herself.
She trundles up the stairs and finds Daddy Pig and her two brats rolling on the floor with laughter because losing your Mummy’s work and not being punished for it is a whole barrel of laughs. Wait my sides hurt so much.
Does she slam that door and walk out without even packing her bags? No, she just collapses on the floor and laughs with them. Oh well, if you can’t beat them (with a cricket bat preferably) then I guess you just gotta join them. Maybe she’s just hysterical or something. I look closely for tears in her eyes but I can’t see any.
So girls, this is what happens when you get these silly ideas above your station. If you take the time to learn this now while you are still young then you will avoid disappointment later.
After the credits rolled, Mummy Pig picked herself up off the floor, it was alright, she’ll start that letter again after the brats had gone to bed. She trudged back downstairs to finish dinner, and then she did the washing up, cleared up endless piles of crappy plastic toys, ran a bath for the brats, scrubbed them down, patted them dry but by the time they got to bed they were dirty again. She read them a story but they refused to go to bed because it was too hot, still light blah blah blah.
By the time they really did go to bed, she had more tidying to do and when Daddy Pig had been cooking dinner, he’d slapped tomato sauce everywhere, so she gave the kitchen floor a quick wipe and then there was stuff to get ready for morning etc
She fell into bed. There’s always tomorrow.
But it never got written, that letter, what with one thing and another. That novel was actually quite good, as poignant and clever as anything on the Orange list. Our lives would have been all the better for reading it. But Mummy Pig never got published, there was always something else to do.
God Bless your restless and hugely talented soul Mummy Pig.
Now as for Daddy Pig, I do hope that's bacon I smell cooking.
Posted by purple elephant at June 13, 2006 10:49 AM