Colouring

Looking back on my childhood with rose tinted specs, I imagine life to have been full of long hot summers, punctuated only by a brief spell of leaf kicking, hiding from firework bangs and singing carols. As a musician, my build up to Christmas was always longer than most people's but we never practised carols or Christmas songs until after bonfire night. Winter lasted for about 4 weeks, with two of them being Christmas; the rest of the time it was summer.

Obviously, that is a better way of running the world. 

Now that I'm old and grumpy, life is one long winter, Christmas lasts for eleven weeks and it rains all summer.

Logically, I know things haven't altered that much but yesterday I discovered something that has disappeared, probably forever. 

You can sometimes spot cultural changes in songs. When my children were small they had a nursery rhyme book that contained these words:

Ip dip do

The cat's got the flu

The dog's got the weasels 

So out goes you!

"Is the weasels when you've got a nasty cough?" my daughter wondered. It was then I suddenly realised that many of those long hot summers, doing handstands on the field also included checking each other's belly for spots. Measles was a right of passage and meant you could have a couple of weeks off school, on the sofa watching Pipkin, having tomato soup for lunch and drinking Lucozade.

It's probably a good thing that children don't know about measles and can maintain their 100% attendance record, especially as they can watch kids TV all through the night now if they want. They can still watch that weird hare from Pipkin and his innuendos on YouTube.

Hartley Hare Being Naughty

Yesterday, I was teaching the children to sing Rocking Around The Christmas Tree,  for their Nativity play. It was so much fun watching them come up with a dance move to fit the line, "Everyone dancing merrily in the new old fashioned way."

They rubbed their tummies as they sang, "Later we'll have some pumpkin pie," but baffled me with the action they chose for, "and we'll do some caroling."

"What are you doing?"

"Colouring!"

"Colouring? What's that got to do with Christmas?"

"We always do colouring at Christmas."

"My mum gets a grown up colouring book too."

"Mine too."

"What about your Dad?"

"Don't be silly, Miss, Dad's don't colour!"

Grrrrrrrr. Of course, colouring is something women are encouraged to do to stop their little brains getting distracted with anything else like world peace, the human genome project or cracking the Beale cipher! Sorry. I just got distracted for a moment there. Back to the story....

"It's caroling not colouring. Have you heard of caroling?"

Blank looks.

"It's where you sing carols."

More blank looks.

"You know, carols? The Christmas songs we sing every year?"

"Like Away in a Manger?"

Phew! Spontaneous singing and happy faces.

"Anyway, caroling is where groups of people go and sing carols outdoors and people give them money for charity."

"Why?"

"Errrmmm," Saved by a girl in the choir.

"Will people give us money when we sing in the High Street for the Christmas Fayre?"

"No, we won't ask them to. Carol singers used to go around the streets and knock on doors."

"Are you allowed to do that?"

"If you have a licence."

"Does Father Christmas have  a licence?"

"I suppose he must have. Let's sing!"

Caroling appears to be dead. Long live colouring!