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I managed to be a focused and present parent today (let’s pretend that’s not unusual) and had lots of fun with the kids. My daughter has become a bit intrigued by puppets now she realises that this is somehow my job and wanted to make a puppet show. So together we turned a big box into a puppet theatre and decorated it with a coloured paper curtain and some sticky smiley and frown faces that she had in her craft box (I liked this touch particularly as unwittingly she had used the traditional theatrical design). It’s always nice making things with kids because if it looks like shit you can blame them, but this was almost entirely me doing my absolute best.,
And then we called up Catie and Ernie and Phoebe put on a show. Which was mainly her just sticking toys through the hole and saying what they were, but it was still entertaining. For some reason a penguin had a tragic story as it had apparently lost its mother. And then the dragon and T Rex went on a rampage where they started eating the softer toys. It really is the magic of theatre. It was gripping. Ernie heckled a bit and tried to hug or punch the performers. But everyone is a critic.
Then he had a go, in a somewhat derivative work in which the penguin asked where its mummy as and the dragon ate the softer toys. It’s almost like critics only say and do mean things because they wish it was them up there doing the exact same thing.
Obviously my heart swelled at the long tradition of puppeteering (I’ve been doing it for three months now) passing down to another generation. I am safe in the knowledge that my dolls and bits of rotten food and dead insects and food lids will live on for another generation.
My daughter then made a TV out of a box and a bit of soft foam, which was odd, because I don’t think she’s ever seen a TV that isn’t a flat screen, yet she created one like I would have known as a kid. She got inside and did a bit of presenting before crawling out of the screen like the woman from the Ring. Again comedy and horror mixed beautifully.
I remembered that at my nursery school in Loughborough in 1971 there had been an empty TV cabinet and I used to love getting inside that and pretending I was on the TV. Should have kept it really and then I could have pretended I was on TV for the last 20 years as well.
I suppose all kids do this, so it doesn’t mean much, even if one of them goes on to be briefly on TV twenty years later. But both kids have definitely picked up a showing off gene from somewhere. I guess it’s my wife’s side of the family.
Will they be on TV in 20 years time? Of course not. There will be no TV in 20 years time. They might be living in cardboard boxes though.
In the afternoon I got the kids out of the house for two and a half hours, taking them to get the car washed (when they've watched enough times I will get them to do it), to a playground and park and then to the supermarket. Whilst I still find it terrifying being in sole charge in a public place (and boy those kids can scoot fast), it was loads of fun and I gave their mum a break. I know, I am a fucking hero. For approximately 150 minutes a week.
Later I showed the kids a bit of me on Taskmaster. They were fairly blasé about me being on TV, which let’s face it, isn’t down to that happening all the time. Also they’d both been on an interactive TV where they could respond to the viewers and climb through the screen, so my boring uninteractive show must have seemed archaic to them. They were a bit intrigued by my magic trick and had questions about the teddy bear, but really more from the bear’s point of view. My son got bored but my daughter stayed til the end and seemed happy that I won. I told her there were 9 more and she asked me if I would get money if I won in the end. Which is also a good question for a performer to fixate on. I wouldn’t tell her if I won or lost though. She doesn’t know my history, so victory is still a possibility in her innocent and hopeful mind. Double bluff? I don't even know any more. I can't remember what happened that long ago.
