Saturday, February 18, 2006

The Man from the Ministry

It seems that my power over young children may have waned. I have previously mentioned that young children seem to find me fascinating and often end up watching me when I am speaking. Well it seems this may no longer be the case. I was looking after my nephew last night and half way through eating his dinner he fell asleep right there in his high chair. There I was chatting away to him (he is only 11 months old, so is kind of a captive audience. You have to make the most of them not being able to speak) and he fell asleep. Admittedly he was sitting there staring at me immediately before lapsing into unconsciousness but I suspect that he was willing me to stop talking so that he could doze off undisturbed.

I think I may just generally be a bad aunt. I had to change his nappy and put him to bed and managed to somehow remove his dirty nappy and get it stuck to his foot. I think maybe I need to go back to aunt training school.

Anyway, this isn’t going to turn into one of those blogs which gives a blow by blow account of some child’s life. I think we can safely conclude that I am a bit of a rubbish aunt and highlighting this on a regular basis is not going to do much for my street cred. Not that I actually have any street cred…

On other matters, on one of my wanders through the weird wide web, I realised the BBC news website is doing a tribute to Public Information Films, which is kind of strange as last Saturday I mentioned one of those films that really scared. Anyway, if you used to watch those films then it might bring back a few horrifying memories. Do you remember the one on the dangers of electricity sub-stations?

I had totally forgotten that there used to be one on the dangers of rabies. After watching that film, I was worried that if I went anywhere near an animal in another country that I was probably going to get rabies and die. I remember going to Italy when I was quite young and there was a small dog at the hotel we were staying at. I really wanted to stroke it but thought it might be fatal to do so - and when it actually licked my hand I’m surprised I didn’t draw up my last will and testament.

It might not be entirely unreasonable to question how accurate the films were if they just seemed to fill most children with absolute horror, but I never have caught rabies or been electrocuted whilst playing Frisbee and maybe that is entirely thanks to watching those films. Thank you Man from the Ministry

1 comment:

30-Something said...

There's an aunt training school? I feel so underqualified now...