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I am worried my daughter might have joined ISIS. She keeps pointing up at the ceiling for no reason and smiling. I don’t know if I should turn her over. She looks harmless enough but that makes her the perfect sleeper agent. She sleeps a lot too. Scary.
Luckily she sort of points in all directions, so it probably means she hasn’t affiliated with one belief system or death cult just yet. She’s open-minded about her options. It’s embarrassing when a baby is more open-minded than you, right ISIS? You’re feeling pretty silly now.
She’s getting to be more fun every day and now seems to understand stuff, even if she’s not really speaking herself (she used to say “cat” when she saw one of the cats, but is bored of that now and I thought she repeated my wife saying “shit” the other night, but it might have been a coincidence). We can be more rambunctious now she’s older and she usually enjoys being turned upside down or thrown in the air and really laughs when she is tickled. One of my own major childhood memories is the heady delight of being tickled or even knowing you’re about to be tickled. It was awful and wonderful at the same time and I miss being so ticklish that it can be that meeting point of Heaven and Hell. But it’s fun to see my daughter enjoying it in the same way and her giggles are infectious.
I sing to her lots and play her Little Baby Bum videos, so am getting obsessed with the internal logic of nursery rhymes. One of my favourites to sing to her is “Five Little Monkeys” which if you’re unfamiliar with goes “Five little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head, mother called the doctor and the doctor said, “No more jumping on the bed””. You’d think the whole monkey family would have learned a lesson from the incident and the doctor’s wise words (though one might wonder why he is not bothering to treat the unfortunate monkey that has had a head trauma, laziness I assume). But then in the next verse, the one untreated monkey is absent (and one holds one’s breath when you realise why that must be) and there are now just four monkeys bouncing on the bed, and one falls off and also bumps its head. The mother calls the doctor and the doctor comes up with the same diagnosis, “No more bouncing on the bed”. He doesn’t seem to be cross that his advice has been ignored and doesn’t gloat or say “I told you so”. Perhaps he assumes that twice bitten, once shy and the mother, now having lost two of her kids to brain damage, will keep a closer eye on her remaining children. Or maybe the monkey doctor has a very big monkey practice and a lot of monkey mums are letting their children bounce on the bed (that for some reason they have in the jungle) and it’s hard for him to keep track of which ones he’s dealt with already.
But when a third little monkey falls off the bed and the mother again calls him for help, he again doles out the same advice. Which seems unrealistic. Even in a world where monkeys have beds, telephones and doctors. When I sing it to Phoebe, I change the words and the doctor says, “What? Didn’t you listen to me the last two times. I’ve told you to stop your children bouncing on the bed and you’re wilfully ignoring me. Really this has to stop.” Perhaps the mother has reasoned that if monkeys are bouncing on a bed and make an error then it’s a relatively short fall, whereas if they go into their natural habitat and swing in the high trees and fall they risk worse injury. But if that’s the case she should stop ringing the doctor. He only has one solution and she’s heard it.
And then, when I suppose inevitably, the two remaining monkeys start bouncing on the bed and one falls off and bumps his head and the scatter-brained mother calls the doctor, in my version the doctor says, “Seriously, you’ve only got yourself to blame for this. I’ve told you four times what you have to do and you don’t seem to care. You’ve only got one child left without brain damage now, the others presumably dead or confined to wheel-chairs. There’s nothing I can do to help due to the huge numbers of monkeys being harmed by bouncing on the bed in my practice. I can only repeat my advice that the best cure for this problem is to not let your one remaining child bounce on the bed. And maybe get rid of the bed all together. I can understand it was harder to keep your eye on them when there were loads of them, although they did all just hang around on the bed so it should have been easy, but please don’t let the same thing happen to this last one."
But the mother doesn’t listen and the last monkey cracks its skull in the same way as its stupid siblings, which is perhaps natural selection in action. Somehow the foolish mother managed to breed (some male monkeys like stupid female monkeys as they are less threatened by them) but at least none of her progeny have reached sexual maturity. And my doctor says, “I did all I could. I wash my hands of you. You are complicit in the serious injury of your own children and I will be calling the authorities to have any offspring that survives taken into care. I don’t even care that you’re a monkey and thus lack basic common sense. It should be instinctive. And in any case, I am a monkey and I’ve managed to work my way up to being a doctor. Not a very good one that can treat anyone or anything. But I still have a good idea how to stop all the infant monkeys in comas in this jungle. We’ve had to bring in loads more beds just to accommodate them, which ironically exacerbates the problem. You must be sent to monkey prison and I am also going to sterilise you so that this can never happen again."
Phoebe doesn’t seem to like my changes, but I think she has to learn.
As it is, the song, I suppose is a warning to children about the dangers of jumping on the bed (something that I enjoyed as a nipper, second only to being tickled), which is fine as it’s not just monkeys who can bump their heads. But given the song then shows everyone ignoring the advice and carrying on, seems to give the message that it’s important to flout authority at every turn and just have fun, even if that results in personal injury. It’s fucked up and I don’t care who knows it.
And unlike in the very similar story of the five little ducks the story ends with no monkeys left to bounce on the bed and a mother bereft and (hopefully) imprisoned. It’s very, very dark.
My other big revelation from listening to too many nursery rhymes in a row is that Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep have THE SAME TUNE. It’s the same tune almost exactly and I have only just realised at 48 years of age. And the alphabet song. Same fucking tune. Also Michael Finnegan and Wheels not he Bus… SAME TUNE. Those lazy nursery rhyme writers just put out the same bloody songs again and again and cash in double the cheques. If they make the subjects different enough then they think no one will spot it. But I have spotted it. And I am appalled.
The Leicester Happy Now? tour date has now sold out, as has Sutton Coldfield, which means that including the shows I did last year eight of the first eleven shows have sold all their tickets. This is unprecedented. I know you can usually rely on me to give you the last minute option of turning up and buying tickets on the door. And there's plenty of places where I think that will be possible (Stafford and Croydon have hardly sold any and York and St Albans are in massive venues) but it might be worth booking ahead. I haven't even really started doing any publicity for the tour yet, beyond podcast mentions, so once interviews and press start coming out it might be too late. I mentioned the early gigs that are selling well recently, but I just looked at the Bristol date, which is a few months away and that's very close to selling out too. So book now to see if this monkey routine makes it into the show!
