Apparently a quiet news day for the Daily Telegraph today. Having a delightful (and forever chaste) daughter myself, I shouldn’t be writing this, but given the pictorial evidence above, let’s just say that certain young ladies will probably have fewer problems retaining their honour through those difficult teenaged years than others.
Remaining on the subject of religion (albeit tangentially), I found myself sitting cross legged on the floor of a church hall on Friday morning (it would take too long to explain why), fiddling around with plastic toys at the Baptist playgroup whilst keeping half an eye on the baby chimps.
Certain moaning right wing papers (most of which I read, and wholly agree with, of course) bang on incessantly about the feminisation of society, and the dire consequences of everything from the oestrogen in our drinking water to the lack of male role models for boys during their critical years of development due to the absence of fathers, male teachers etc.
Remaining on the subject of religion (albeit tangentially), I found myself sitting cross legged on the floor of a church hall on Friday morning (it would take too long to explain why), fiddling around with plastic toys at the Baptist playgroup whilst keeping half an eye on the baby chimps.
Certain moaning right wing papers (most of which I read, and wholly agree with, of course) bang on incessantly about the feminisation of society, and the dire consequences of everything from the oestrogen in our drinking water to the lack of male role models for boys during their critical years of development due to the absence of fathers, male teachers etc.
Needless to say I was the only male older than 3½ in the room, and as is the case with most fathers, I soon mucked in and started building stuff with bricks, making fire engine noises etc. This soon attracted a small but loyal following of youngsters mistakenly referring to me as ‘daddy’. One of them even presented me with a small knitted ball, measuring perhaps 4 inches across, and judging by its weight, filled with old socks or tights. The sort of thing with no edges, no corners, indeed no potential to harm anyone at all. (You can see where this is heading).
“Wow!” I said, “Thank you!” (addressing those under 3 requires the liberal use of exclamation marks!!), “a ball!! Shall we throw it?”. And so I gently threw the ball maybe three feet into the air, with sixteen pairs of juvenile eyes following its climb and descent with a mixture of wonderment and delight. “Again!” someone said. So I threw it again, this time eliciting some giggles of pleasure from the assembled watchers. And then before I knew it…
… one of the old bats who runs the place (short hair, overweight, smells of moth ball, looks like a dog breeder) had waddled over, and said in a tone which could only be described as light-hearted-with-an-undertone-of-threat, “We don’t approve of that sort of thing here, and I’d be grateful if you could stop immediately,” as if I’d been teaching my young charges the rudiments of sodomy.
Well I mean, honestly. No wonder we trample all over God's earth destroying things when we're brought up by such people.
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