Costumes

Because it’s Children In Need day today we’ve had to send our two boys off into the world dressed for the stage.

The youngest, Tom, has had to go to nursery dressed as a pirate. This has meant attiring him in a stripy top, a sword belt, a little waistcoat and some trousers that have been theatrically shredded at the bottom to give him that “Mutiny On The Bounty” look.

He looks frighteningly like Mr Smee from Walt Disney’s Peter Pan.

The costume has been finished off with a little foam hook that he can wave around. It’s very blunt and soft and I suspect the only danger to life and limb will be a transference of snot from Tom’s extremely runny nose to the face of whoever gets too close to him.

I wish I was clever enough to make a joke about Mutiny On The Bogey but I’m not so I won’t.

Our eldest, Ben, has in his own opinion been rather short changed in the dressing up stakes. His school, for some possibly pacific reason, has demanded that the children attend today dressed as “dancers”.

Hmm. It’s not an idea to inspire a rough-and-tumble 7 year old.

Ben spent the entire journey to school this morning eyeing up Tom’s hook with unmasked envy and I must admit I feel a little sympathy towards him (although I expressed this by making sundry jokes about ballet tutus and suggesting that he tell his mates that he’s come to school today dressed as Wayne Sleep). While it’s laudable that the school are promoting the idea of non aggressive interaction and trans-gender activities I can’t help feeling that most of the kids – boy and girl – would have been far happier with a “Kings and Queens” theme, say, or a monsters theme or, yes, even pirates. And if some of the girls wanted to dress as a King rather than a Queen and some of the boys wanted to be a princess for the day I’m sure it would have been fine.

But at the end of the day you can’t stop boys being boys and girls being girls.

Ben owns a fine collection of toy swords but even if Karen and I hadn’t tooled him up with the best that Toys R Us had to offer I guarantee he would have gone out on a walk and found himself a stick or a branch and fashioned his own. My motto is: better a cheaply manufactured foam sword than a piece of lead pipe lifted off a building site. Especially when you’re on the receiving end.

But back to the “dancers” theme. I can only assume that someone at Ben’s school is a fan of Strictly Come Dancing and I now feel that we’ve regrettably missed a great trick:

With the addition of a grey wig, some wobbly jowls and a paunch made of several sofa cushions Ben could have gone dressed as John Sergeant.

I’m sure that would have made him feel a lot better.

Princely Sums

News that Prince has “given away” his new album, Planet Earth, free with a UK National newspaper this morning has created quite a stir in both the press and the music industry.

Although I can applaud the apparent sense of largesse behind the move – “giving music back to the fans” – I nevertheless agree with those who think that the strategy is ill conceived and ill thought out.

I’m sure much of Prince’s real motivation is a huge desire to cheese-off all those music industry bigwigs and fat cats who have leeched off him and other artists over the years, hampered his creativity and degraded the art form by dunging it about with the cursed accoutrements of business and commerce. I can well sympathise.

Except that it’s not the fat cats who’ll suffer from the eventual disappearance of the high street music store that this move seems to herald. It’s the shop workers, the stock buyers and all those ordinary people who work in the industry who’ll suffer the most. And these people have usually got into this line of work precisely because they are music fans. The very fans in fact that Prince wishes to lavish his generosity upon.

It’s fine for Prince. He evidently doesn’t need the money. He’s also big-egoed enough to cold-shoulder the inevitable “his album was so bad he had to give it away” jibes that will inevitably follow his recent bout of munificence.

But speaking as someone who’s brother-in-law has recently lost their job – without any kind of payment or compensation whatsoever – due to the collapse of the Fopp record store chain I agree with those who think that Prince’s album give-away is just a mighty kick in the teeth for those who have contributed to Prince’s material success over the past 4 decades.

If Prince wanted to show off his benevolence then why not give all the proceeds of the album sales to charity? Doesn’t it make better sense to make money for a good cause than to make no money whatsoever?

Preventing some company bigwig from buying yet another timeshare in the Algarve is one thing. Taking food of the table of an ordinary bloke in the high street is something else entirely.

Planet Earth?

Sigh, you’re damn right it is.