In smashing the screen with a giant hammer, Dad manages to wound both himself and Mum. In the next scene, the children push them along a cliff in a wheelchair — ‘The pushy have become the pushed’. Of course the thing careers over the cliff, but the parents are grabbed in the nick of time by their kids. Father attributes the rescue to the standards they have learnt from books. Not at all: the boy exclaims,
‘It’s not the fruit of your tuition.
We got it from the TELEVISION!’
(In countless serials, he and his sister have seen ‘the hero grab/ Some bike or plane or taxicab’.) Father deduces the obvious moral:
Every child’s a human being,
Not a piece of Plasticine.
Loving parents, learn from me.
If your children crave TV
Tell them, OK, what the hell
You can watch it for a spell...
IF YOU READ A BOOK AS WELL.
Accepting the Foyle’s Poetry Prize in 1955, John Betjeman said, ‘Poets are prophets.’ He wasn’t only thinking of William Blake. Just a few days after reading Boris Johnson’s poem, I opened my Times to find the headline, ‘Boarding helps children escape pushy families, claims top head’. Vicky Tuck, headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, had suggested that children were sometimes better off at boarding school, to escape parental pressure at home. She told the Times:
There is a phrase ‘helicopter parenting’, which refers to parents who hover over their children, making sure they can play a musical instrument ...can do this and do that. That can create anxiety in children and is shortening childhood.
After reading that, I decided to attempt a pendant to Boris Johnson’s effort
The pupils ruled by Mrs Tuck
Can hardly comprehend their luck.
No helicopter parents hover
Above their work to give them bovver.
Dear little Rosie says: ‘My Poppa
Is like an ever-circling chopper;
His constant vigil’s quite absurd —
And Mummy is a whirlybird.
I’m not considered an emoter,
But shudder when I hear a rotor.
Thank God I’m not force-fed with knowledge:
Cocooned here by the Ladies’ College,
I take things at an easy pace,
And Dad and Mum aren’t in my face.
How Boris understood my plight
I’ll never know; but he is right.
Parental pressure’s not for me —
This place is just my cup of tea.’
Comments
Anna
December 18th, 2007 9:23amSeriously, do you really think that you British are well dressed, know what good food is(maybe you have learnt it last week on television), and that your drinking habits are acceptable? It is way too easy to loose yourselves in the mean French VS the good English battle. I break you the news: all Europeans think exactly like Madame Mont Paisir when it comes to the English. She reads our minds and knows what we talk about at dinner parties!! Well done Sarah Long!
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