...of a sort. Did you see that a bishop was arrested - and allegedly roughed up - by police for sending his son up a chimney. This was no Dickensian throwback however. He put his son on his house's chimney (attached to a harness) to take part in a 'most unusual place to read a book' competition. I WANT HIM TO BE MY DAD!
He sounds GREAT! I can understand a passer-by being a bit concerned but come on, in this day and age of seriously lazy parenting and even lazier forms of abuse (eat what you like, play what you like, I'll do to you what I like...) what serious abuser is going to go to the effort of taking a kid and sticking them on a chimney stack!? Common sense, people!
From this moment on I want to see more kids up a ladder and crawling all over the eaves. I want to see 'em up telegraph poles, in trees (taller the better). Now, what did I do with that ladder...
Heads up from The Times Alphamummy blog. It's a You Tube video of the actress Salma Hayek breastfeeding a baby whose mother fears she can no longer produce enough milk. Brings up the whole question of wetnurses. Now, my concierge service, rentamummy.com, provides many things, but wetnursing isn't one of them.
I don't have an ick factor about this. Going to someone's coffee morning where they pick up my son and stuff a boob in his mouth - that's icky. But here the child was obviously hungry and Ms Hayek could provide something far better and safer than anything that might have come out of a bottle (btw, I'm not anti-formula either, I just question the safety of the water and sterilising equipment used to prepare it here). BUT... but something does make me uneasy. What does this woman do when SH has had her photo opp (though I do think she did it with the best of motives)? And how does she feel? I know as a mum that anything I fail to do for my kids, however small, makes me feel shit and inadequate. How does this woman feel having her baby swept away and fed in a way that she simply cannot manage? There are a million questions here, and none of them are as You Tube seems to show, "WHOOO Salma got her titties out!!"
Honestly, boys...
Kind Mr Fry over on Twitter has pointed me in the direction of this http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/legal-chill-from-lbc-973-over-jeni-barnetts-mmr-scaremongering/. When you read it you have to highlight the text as it has legal issues.
The general jist is that Jeni Barnett on LBC has been pontificating about the MMR vaccine and its risks. This whole story, started by Andrew Wakefield over 10 years ago, has been widely discredited and yet she picks up the baton and scares another generation of parents. The upshot of the original misinformation was that vaccine take up dropped to 75% and is threatening 'herd immunity' - that is, even if you've had the vaccine, if less than 80% of the population is immunised at any given time, the strain of the disease can proliferate and you can become infected. And measles isn't a case of two days in bed and itchy spots. It can kill.
And silly women who promote stupid urban myths are just silly. Supposed journalists ought to know better.
The media has itself in a froth about schools in the South of England closing because of a gentle dusting of snow. Being from oop north myself, we'd sit in class, teeth chattering, frost forming on the inside of the windows begging for a snow day. One would be begrudgingly given if the snow topped five feet and the boiler packed up.
And yet I still don't begrudge the sissy sassenachs their snow (frost?) day. It happens rarely enough as it is and a sudden unexpected blast of good fortune is what makes childhood memorable. The children weren't in class learning about the Battle of Agincourt or how many fathoms in a farthingale or somesuch. However, they got important practical demonstrations of projectiles, the Battle of Hastings and pure, unadulterated, not-sponsored-by-Sony-or-Apple FUN! C'mon guys - the kids are alright!!
(and face it, we got a duvet day too, right?)
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