Gladiators

You know everything's right in the world when Gladiators is back on TV again. Interest rate rises, the Taliban and Pakistani cricket problems all pale into insignificance when those bold men and women slap on their lycra.

I had fond memories of watching Gladiators with my family, but my husband's pointed out that I'm too old to have done that, so it must have be It's a Knockout, another quality show from that era. But curled up on the couch with the kids I did feel some sense of history repeating itself.

Watching it as more of an adult than last time, there were some interesting things about the show last Saturday. The first was that they all wore mouthguards, padding and safety harnesses. We couldn't remember the gladiators of old stopping to clip onto the safety line, or spitting out their mouthguard before they made some comment on the state of the game. And that was the other thing, the speaking. There were a few gladiators who could string a coherent sentence together, but some of them seemed more comfortable with saying just a few words without much concern for whether they made sense. My daughter also raised the question of why the girls needed to have their togs on when they didn't go swimming, which is a valid question.

I'm not sure how long the show will last, surely not too many competitors will put their hand up to humiliate themselves on national television, but I do know where I'll be this Sunday night. I can guarantee that I'll have at least one child wriggling around next to me, and I'll be loving every minute of that show!

The Birds, the Bees and the Guinea Pigs

Our family had a guinea pig die a couple of weeks ago. That left poor old Kit Kat on his own - not a good life for a guinea pig. After lots of discussion, it was decide that we should get a lady friend for Mr Kit Kat and allow them to have a family. Little did I know what that would mean for our little family.

On Saturday we found a 5 week old girl guinea pig with an unfortunate hair-do. Dubbed Princess Leia, she's been handled constantly since she's come home and I'm beginning to worry that she thinks she's human. Anyway, Princess Leia might be ready to have babies, but she's a bit too young to start a family, so she's having to live in a separate box, waiting to join the old boy. Can you see my dilemma here? Our children are learning all about abstinence at the moment and the curly questions just keep coming. My best answer to date is that Princess Leia is like a 15 year old, but she has to wait until she's 25 to have babies. I'm wondering if I shouldn't have said she's like a 20 year old waiting until she's 30, just to make sure, but I guess by the time my kids are that old they will have worked out the real answers anyway.

Nobody told me parenting would be quite like this. Do you find that happens a lot? I knew we'd have to talk about the cycle of life at some point, and we've done that with our older son, but this process has happened much quicker and much more openly. Being compared to a guinea pig is not such a nice thing, and that seems to be how my children are thinking of me at the moment.

Anyway, the good news is that they've found out from us first. With this world of cyberspace and global information, I still think it's important that kids learn their most important lessons at home. Whether that's how babies are made, how to get on with others, how to read or how to tie shoelaces. There's only so much we should pass onto others, and while teachers can clear up that the Great Wall of China was not built to keep the rabbits out, there are some things best talked about behind the front door.