Who is the cutest? You decide BONUS tokens
ACCORDING to a recent survey, nobody whistles as much as they used to. Givowwer!
Fascinating as this information is, I’m more intrigued by the people who thought of doing the survey in the first place.
Why would you? Imagine the Monday morning market research management meeting – “Guys, this week we are going to get to the guts of an issue that is screaming out for truth, insight and clarity.” “Brexit? Widening poverty?” “Erm, not exactly. We need to find our why cooncil workies don’t whistle Neil Diamond numbers while leaving the empty bins four doors up from where you live, or why the few remaining milkmen don’t wake you up at daft o’clock with their own gadgiefied interpretation of Delilah or Careless Whisper.”
Who knows – maybe there is a place for such apparently trivial or pointless research – perhaps it’s not as daft as it seems at first glance.
Maybe the apparent modern reluctance to whistle is due to the fear that the thought police might label it as sexist. In fairness, however, only the most puritanical PC mentalist could possibly reckon that my poorly-performed whistling of the opening bars of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep while mowing me lawn has suddenly turned me into Jeremy Clarkson.
Maybe more surveys into stuff we don’t do, or encounter, as much as we used to might cast some light on our present-day living.
For example, why don’t they have that white dog doo anymore? In the seventies it was as common as power cuts and Chipmunk crisps (only 2p a bag y’knaa!). As an exdog owner who did the whole embarrassing, down on your knees poo bag malarky like some deranged version of CSI Gateshead, I think this psychedelic retro-poo had its merits.
The recent efforts of a northern mam to spray selfishly-abandoned dog mess bright pink so kids could avoid it is commendable. Seventies’ white poo did this automatically – you couldn’t miss its pale cream form lying forlornly on the path – unless it was snowing!
Let’s get another survey going. We don’t we seem to get the spectacle of mams standing at the back door shouting you in for your tea – why? It was like some sort of Geordie whale song – a mam’s cry could be heard across housing estates, main roads, woods, parks, building sites and probably underwater too. No mobiles needed then! Kids would begin teeming back hyem in packs – guided like smart bombs homing in on a laser beam.
Why has this stopped? Is it simply because there are no kids actually roaming free for the mams to call in? Maybe our safety-obsessed, risk-averse culture is to blame. It wasn’t always so. By the age of nine, most of my peers’ energies were focused on jumping or climbing over 30ft drops, navigating welded steel playground structures sunk into concrete, or experimenting with naked flames.
Allowing your child to attempt even one of these activities would now automatically trigger a visit from social services!
A final survey on kids attitudes to playing oot? I recently took my two out on a walk and showed then where dad used to build camps. They looked at me with detached confusion, like I was showing them the archaeological dig that famously exhumed Richard of York . (As a final random thought, wasn’t finding his body under a car park more like an episode of the Sopranos – who whacked Richie the hump?)
Mike is performing his own brand new show, “Shearer shared me Pram – a tale of heroes, legends and tuppence back on the bottle”, at the Brandling Arms in Gosorth on Monday, July 9. Tickets available now