A soothing antidote for an angry world ... delivered by midwives
This is the age of the trivial controversy. People are ready to feud to the bone over the most inconsequential questions. high Priestess of domestic chiffchaff Kirstie Allsopp sparked absurd hysteria this week by saying a washing machine has no place in the kitchen. The Highland Midwife (C5) risked an even greater outcry, as it showed new parents susanna and Dan crooning happy Birthday to their baby, minutes after the birth.
Can this be right? surely, happy Birthday is an anniversary song, to celebrate a specific day of each year. it can’t be used to mark the actual day of a child’s birth . . . otherwise, it would never be sung anywhere but maternity wards.
Before the invention of social media, such a minor eccentricity might have caused a moment of amusement. A few viewers might have said: ‘i’ve never heard of anyone singing happy Birthday to a newborn baby. have you?’
And their spouses would reply: ‘hmm? What? sorry, i must have dozed off for a moment.’ With that, the flashpoint would be past.
But now we have Twitbook and Whats its face and all these other marvels of electronic chatter, petty disagreements can instantly escalate to national conflicts. And social media wars go nuclear very quickly: it turns out Miss Posh-pants Allsopp can use language to make a fishwife faint.
No wonder that, with serious political issues testing the country, the public mood is so ugly. Blame it on the nastiness of social media.
The highland Midwife is the most bland and soothing of shows. it follows three mums-to-be in rural scotland through the latter stages of pregnancy, charting their wobbles and worries before the arrival.
For Emma, expecting her third child, the delivery was really big. she looked like she had a hot air balloon stuffed under her top.
hubby Bob thought this was hilarious, but the midwife was concerned that such a giant in the womb was putting strain on Emma’s Caesarean scars from previous births.
When baby Tommy emerged, he had the heft and confident expression of a heavyweight wrestler. he snuggled contentedly in mum’s arms. ‘i don’t know how you could love someone so much when you’ve only known him a few minutes,’ Emma said.
This makes for gentle, unde- manding television, a welcome antidote to all the online viciousness. it’s cheaply made, and although my gripe is that we don’t see nearly enough of the babies, it is guaranteed to warm your heart.
Joanna Lumley’s India (iTV) travels too fast to be relaxing. she started in Mumbai, a city a third of the size of London but home to 22 million people — and she seemed to meet all of them. Dashing through the streets, she was smiling and bowing, pressing her palms together at the throngs along the roads.
in case we doubted how deep Joanna’s Raj roots really were (she was born in Kashmir), she dropped in at The Times of india, the newspaper where her great-uncle ivor had been the last British editor.
A glimpse of life in the slums, where families pay exorbitant rents to huddle in concrete dugouts without running water, was a shocking sight. Then she toured a temple carved from a mountain, hurtled up a half-built skyscraper, visited a maharajah’s palace, milked a camel and met some sacred cows.
As she took the camel milk to market, Joanna threatened to start another national dispute. Leaping onto the back of a moped, she rode side-saddle, with her legs crossed elegantly on one side of the bike.
is that safe? is that legal? Oh, the controversy.